Electronic and Virtual Libraries: Access for Print Disabled People Introduction to the Special Thematic Session 1
Jan Engelen and Dominique Burger
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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Research Group on Document Architectures
[email protected] 2 INSERM U483, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France
[email protected]
Abstract. The group of print disabled persons consists of those who cannot use the standard printed material for their information needs because of a visual handicap (low vision, blindness), because of dyslexia or because of a severe motor handicap that makes it impossible to handle books or magazines. Also persons with a severe auditive handicap often prefer sign language information above character-and-word based information. Although more and more persons get used to access electronic documents it is absolutely vital for print disabled persons that the information is made available electronically. We will briefly describe the current status in this field and produce a framework in which the ICCHP2002 contributions can be located.
"All of us have had fantasies from time to time of enjoying full access to the publicly available collections of printed materials that our sighted neighbours take for granted" (Eric Duffy)
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Electronic Libraries
An enormous amount of libraries and library support systems are currently accessible via the web, but we will try to distinguish the different types: 1. classical (paper-) libraries with electronic catalogues providing also some electronic texts for part of their collection. Examples are the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque Nationale de France and many others. The ALO-books2u initiative will be discussed in this session by M. Köttstorfer1
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Marco Köttstorfer, Klaus Miesenberger, "Virtual Libraries Initiatives with usable results for Print Disabled People: ALO, books2u!, Metae", ICCHP2002
K. Miesenberger, J. Klaus, W. Zagler (Eds.): ICCHP 2002, LNCS 2398, pp. 308–311, 2002. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002
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2. uniquely electronic/web based libraries providing search systems and full texts. Examples are the Gutenberg collection, BrailleNet2, etc. 3. specialised libraries (Braille, talking books, sign language) with electronic catalogues and, sometimes, downloadable documents. Examples are the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) at the Library of Congress and the many European and American organisations for the Blind providing not only the adapted material for which they provide a bibliographical service but also different types of electronic documents. 4. webportals. Webportals are systems that permit to access a large number of services through one access point. An example of this type of service is the Dutch webportal "anderslezen.nl" which will be discussed in this thematic session3. Setting up an electronic library is not a trivial task. Problems that will be discussed during this thematic session are:
- the technical complexities of changing from a bookshelf based library to an electronic archive [Th. Kahlisch4] - document conversions (cf. also next session), automatic processing [G. Jaworek5] - distribution of multimedia file types: which to choose [K. Taha & L. Petrucci6] - coping with the distributed nature of electronic information [C. Moulin7] - producing an added value to existing web resources, creating specialised webportals [V. Brasseur8] - the accessibility of the electronic documents [A. Schmetzke9], cf. also the next section A very tough aspect in information distribution is the handling of copyright issues: as electronic books are extremely simple to copy, often publishers and authors require
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http://www.inrialpes.fr/braillenet/BV/recherche.htm A. Leeman, M. Oosting & M. Verboom, "Unlocking doors: Building an accessible on-line information node", ICCHP2002. Th. Kahlisch, "DZB - A German library for the blind goes digital", ICCHP2002. Gerhard Jaworek, "Perspectives and possibilities for the automated processing of scientific texts for blind and visually impaired people", ICCHP2002. Karim Taha and Lori Petrucci, "ABA’s Virtual Library Services for Blind and Visually Impaired people", ICCHP2002. Moulin Claude, "A distributed document oriented architecture for rendering services to visually impaired students", ICCHP2002. Vincent Brasseur, "Quick Access to Dictionaries for Visually Impaired People", ICCHP2002. Schmetzke, "The accessibility of online library resources for people with print disabilities: latest research and strategies for change", ICCHP2002.
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a trustworthy copyright maintaining chain up to the end user10. Sometimes legal measures are required to make sure that some documents can be made available at all11.
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Electronic Formats
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Text, SGML, HTML, Word, WP
Electronic books and documents are made available in many different formats often depending on the abilities of the persons that are going to read them. For some time it was accepted that only pure text based (ASCII) documents were accessible or because of the many improvements in screen readers, also word-processing formats (MSWord, WordPerfect). In the past several attempts have been made to come up with specialised formats, especially for persons with a visual impairment. Since the beginning of the nineties however a general consensus on the use of mainstream (ISO) standards for structuring electronic documents has been reached. Thanks to the members of the voluntary association ICADD12 ,active in that period (most members are now active in the WAI13), both in the US and in Europe a clear move towards the adoption of SGML (or sometimes HTML) was made14. Document accessibility, even when written in one of these languages, is not always guaranteed and lots of work has been spent on producing guidelines for accessible documents (cf. the above mentioned WAI initiative). New insights will be given by Patil, Maetzel and Neuhold in this section15. As is probably known, SGML documents never became popular on the web and HTML is layout oriented so HTML documents lack a lot of content-based structuring. As the number of HTML documents is so large, several specialised browsers (e.g. Cynthia, discussed in this session16) and add-on software packages have been developed that help visually handicapped readers to get a grip on the content of a webpage (e.g. Webformator17). Accessible interface design will be presented in this session by DeMeglio et al.18 10
Benoit Guillon, "A Secure Internet Architecture for Delivering Documents for the Blind", ICCHP2002. 11 Klaus Miesenberger, "Harmonisation of the Copyright Law throughout the European Union: a challenge for all print disabled people", ICCHP2002. 12 http://www.rit.edu/~easi/itd/itdv02n2/icadd.html 13 http://www.w3.org/WAI 14 B. Bauwens, F. Evenepoel, J. Engelen: "Standardisation as a Prerequisite for Accessibility of Electronic Text Information for Persons who cannot use Printed Material", IEEE Transactions on Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol. 3, no 1, pp. 84-89, 1995. 15 Basawaraj Patil, Klaus Maetzel, Neuhold, "Universal Usability Issues of Textual Information Structures, Commands, and Languages of Native Visually Challenged Users", ICCHP2002: 16 Mathieu Raynal, "CYNTHIA: An HTML browser for visually handicapped people", ICCHP2002. 17 http://www.webformator.com/ 18 M. DeMeglio, M. Hakkinen, H. Kawamura, "Accessible Interface Design: Adaptive Multimedia Information System (AMIS)", ICCHP2002.
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XML
The problems with HTML constituted the main reason why the XML (eXtensible Markup Language) was invented in 1995. This structuring language combined the rigidity of SGML with the simplicity of HTML to produce structured documents. XML documents e.g. do not contain layout and have to be used with stylesheets (or converted to HTML) to be displayed in visual attractive formats. XML actually is a meta-language, a language that permits other languages to be produced. Therefore dozens of XML related standards are now gaining popularity not at least in order to be able to handle multimedia documents or to exchange information efficiently (e_commerce applications). XML documents can be read with the current versions of the popular webbrowsers Internet Explorer and Netscape, but for efficient reading (including note-taking, bookmarks etc) specialised software is needed. This theme is discussed by B. Paepen and J. Engelen in this session19. 2.3
Daisy and eBooks
Because of the ever increasing popularity of XML at least two highly important groups have chosen to use it for their work. The first of these is the Daisy consortium which initially aimed at producing a standard for talking books (assuming the audiocassette was going to disappear soon) but included navigational information or even the full text of the book in the same document. Hybrid books have been presented already at ICCHP 199620 but their current status and popularity is mainly due to the Daisy consortium. The Daisy standard for DTB’s (digital talking books) is currently at version 3. This standard describes the different files (XML and XHTML based) that constitute a Daisy Book. Daisy books can be read by several hardware devices and by using a few public domain PC software packages (cf. the Daisy website). A rather recent evolution is the possibility to read Daisy books using Kurzweil software. Another important evolution which is also followed up closely by the community of persons with a reading disability are the eBooks and especially the work by the Open eBook Forum. More details will be given in this session by OeBF chairman G. Kerscher21 and in the presentation by H. Petrie and G. Weber22.
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Bert Paepen & Jan Engelen, "Using XML as a reading enabler for visually impaired persons", ICCHP2002 20 ICCHP1996, Presentation by A. Arato and T. Vaspori on the Digibook project 21 G. Kerscher, keynote speech at ICCHP2002 22 Helen Petrie & Gerhard Weber, "Reading Multimedia Documents", ICCHP2002
