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Digital Talking Books
Strictly speaking, a digital talking book is a multimedia representation of a print publication that provides access to the text through digitally recorded human voice or synthetic text-to-speech technology. DTBs are largely aimed at blind or visually impaired users but are also used to help improve reading and comprehension skills in students with learning disabilities. They provide various levels of navigation, from partial to complete, and can be read on dedicated hardware devices or on software players that run on Windows or Macintosh computers. Properly created DTBs are based on the DAISY ANSI/NISO Z39.86 standard. As with any XML-based markup language, DTBs can be coded entirely by hand using any text editor but there are a variety of software applications which simplify and speed the creation of DTBs.
Please visit the DAISY Consortium's website for a complete explanation of Digital Talking Books and DTB playback and authoring/production tools.
Accessible Tables and Lists
In addition to making plain text accessible through synthesized or recorded audio, DTB readers and screen readers enable users to access information through properly marked up tables and lists that provides independent access to information which is, in the best cases, on par with their sighted colleagues. This presents many opportunities to bypass a wordy, narrative description in favor of presenting data directly with only a sentence or two of explanation.
Funding for this project is provided by the National Science Foundation.