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In past years, the CSUN conference program has been available on CD-ROM for conference attendees. This year, each part of the program is available for download in HTML or as a separate DAISY book in addition to the CDs. The menus of the restaurants are also included.

Download the CSUN Conference program in HTML and DAISY formats from the DAISY Consortium website.

Discover what's new in SuperNova, Hal, Lunar & LunarPlus v11.50 this coming Tuesday (16th March 2010) at 5 pm (UK time) as Dave Williams, Dolphin's Blindness Product Manager, discusses all things v11.50 on The Global Voice internet radio service.

Dave will be joining Chrissie Cochrane from The Global Voice on their technology show 'Innovations'.

To check out your local listening time and to choose the appropriate link for your connection speed and preferred player, visit the Global Voice website. Alternatively you can 'listen again' in the Global Voice program gallery.

National Achievement Award winner John Russo lives in Texas. Teachers report that he has become popular on campus delivering "standing-room only" tutoring sessions to 20 or 30 students. Currently thriving in graduate school at Texas A&M University, John is a passionate advocate for RFB&D's services, which he began to use as an underclassman at Saddleback Community College in California. He describes how assistive technology levels the playing field for blind and visually impaired students, opening up a critical inroad to independence.

"Let’s compare independence in terms of a sightless individual with a sighted person. In a school environment, a sighted person can purchase a book at a book store; they have it right there immediately. Then as they read, they can use a highlighter and take notes on pertinent information that they’d like to relocate at a later time."

"With the RFB&D website now available to us, we can find a book title and either order it on the phone or find it online; and we can find the link to the download on that book. As soon as we hit 'Download,' within minutes we have that book on our PC and can load it into to our DAISY player. That gives us instant accessibility to this book, any time, anywhere. Late at night, early in the day, we have that book in the palm of our hand, and we can read it".

Read full article on the RFB&D blog.

Title: Bookshare - VR Stream Download Training

Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Time: 4:30 PM - 5:00 PM EDT

• Review of the Victor Reader Stream main features and benefits.
• How to download content from Bookshare and use Companion Software to transfer content to the VR Stream.
• Questions and Answers.

Register

The University of Colorado at Boulder invites speaker proposals for its 13th annual Accessing Higher Ground Conference that will take place November 15-19, 2010. Keynote Speaker: George Kerscher, Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium. The conference focuses on the implementation and benefits of Assistive Technology and Accessible Media in the university and college setting. Other topic areas cover legal and policy issues, including ADA and 508 compliance. The creation of accessible media and information resources, including web pages and library resources are a particular focus of the event. For the main conference, accepted out-of-town speakers will receive a 10% discount off conference registration fees. Local speakers will receive a 5% discount. Additional incentives are provided for accepted pre-conference proposals. For more information, please go to the 13th annual Accessing Higher Ground Conference website.

Registrations are now open for this year's Round Table conference: Think Globally, Act Locally! The Round Table on Information Access for People with Print Disabilities is a trans-Tasman organisation formed in 1981 to facilitate collaboration between organisations and individuals interested in information access issues. For the first time, conference will be held in Auckland, New Zealand. Conference dates are May 23-25, 2010, with optional pre-conference tours on Saturday, May 22nd. Details are available on the Round Table Conference website.

All version 11 users of SuperNova Reader Magnifier, Hal Screen Reader, Lunar Screen Magnifier and LunarPlus Enhanced Screen Magnifier are eligible to receive their free major upgrade to the newly released version 11.50.

"The new and improved Help system is excellent...using SuperNova with Microsoft Word has become a far more enjoyable experience." Graham Allan, ICT teacher at Royal National College for the Blind

"It works much faster and better than before." A US customer.

"Good morning - I have installed Hal version 11.50 and I am very impressed." A UK customer.

• SuperNova, Hal, Lunar and LunarPlus version 11 users should ensure their Dolphin Internet updater is turned on to automatically receive their version 11.50 upgrade. 
• Network administrators running version 11 of SuperNova, Hal, Lunar or LunarPlus should install the version 11.50 demo from the Dolphin website at www.YourDolphin.com.  No unlock or network code will be required. 
• Dolphin software maintenance agreement (SMA) owners will automatically receive their version 11.50 upgrade CD. 
• A free patch will shortly be available for all Dolphin Pen II customers running version 11.
• Customers running version 11 on the original Dolphin Pen I hardware are entitled to a free upgrade to the new Dolphin Pen II hardware, and should contact Dolphin or their Dolphin dealer.

Victor Reader Stream CD Edition combines the world renowned Victor Reader Stream and a special CD player accessory. Victor Reader Stream CD Edition is perfect for people who do not have a personal computer. It is the easiest way to transfer a collection of DAISY books on CDs onto one single, portable audio playback device, without the use of a PC.

Key Benefits:

• Ideal for readers who do not use a personal computer and who want the benefit of a pocket size Stream DAISY/MP3 player
• The perfect solution to transition from using Victor Reader Wave to Victor Reader Stream

Details are available on the HumanWare website.

Tobi, the open source DAISY authoring tool developed by the DAISY Consortium has now reached its first beta. We aim to release version 1.0 by the end of April 2010, but in order to meet this tight schedule we need testers! The more the better, so we can get feedback from a broad variety of users and environments. We offer support via developer and end user forums. You may also send queries directly to Daniel Weck, the lead developer of the Tobi project. Please visit the Tobi development site to download Tobi and get more information.

March 3rd, 2010, Palo Alto, CA – The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), awarded $5 million to Benetech, in collaboration with The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH and the U.S. Fund for DAISY (USFDAISY), to create a research and development center that will greatly improve the processes and availability of accessible images for students with disabilities. The new Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials Center (DIAGRAM) will develop tools and best practices that will make it easier and more cost-effective to create and use accessible images across a range of educational content.

The new Digital Image and Graphic Resources for Accessible Materials Center (DIAGRAM) will develop tools and best practices that will make it easier and more cost-effective to create and use accessible images across a range of educational content. More information is available in the press release.

The DAISY book of the DAISY International Technical Conference in English and the DAISY book of the German-language conference "Barrier-free Preparation of Documents" have been published and are available on the DAISY2009 Conference website.

The Ulverscroft Foundation and the IFLA Libraries Serving Persons with Print Disabilities Section are pleased to announce the outcome of the bids for funding from the 2010 program. Ulverscroft Foundation has made 20,000 Pounds GB available for individual and organization awards to assist the development of library services for print disabled people worldwide and to foster cooperation between library services serving these persons. Individual awards have been offered to:

Mark Freeman, Libraries Manager, South Tyneside Library Service and Chair of Share The Vision, UK

Mark as a public libraries manager wishes to build on existing relations between the libraries in the North East of England and the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Mark has been awarded 2,150 Pounds GB to visit the Associate Member of the DAISY Consortium, South African Library for the Blind and, especially, their Mini Libs service in local communities.

Kathy Teague and Wendy Taylor, Librarians, RNIB National Library Service, UK

Kathy and Wendy are responsible for coordinating the Cataloguing Working Group of the IFLA LPD’s Global Accessible Library Project and are involved in the acquisition of a new library management system by RNIB NLS. They wish to visit the Celia Library in Helsinki, Finland to study their implementation of the new FRBR bibliographic model [Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records] which permits the assigning of relationships between different accessible formats of the same work. Celia belongs to the Finnish DAISY Consortium and is the first specialist library in this field to implement this model. Their visit has clear potential to enhance the DAISY Consortium member RNIB’s services and worldwide developments. Ulverscroft has offered 2,700 to fund this visit.

Yasmine Youssef, Librarian at the Taha Hussein Library for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt.

Yasmine is the library’s specialist in the production of DAISY books and wishes to visit DAISY South Africa to provide expert assistance in their development of DAISY production and to understand the challenges posed by accommodating 11 official languages. This opportunity will enhance her ability to develop services at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Associate Member of the DAISY Consortium) and to assist developments in other Arabic speaking countries. Yasmine has been awarded 2,550 Pounds GB to undertake this visit.

More information and the full list of award recipients can be found on the Ulverscroft Foundation website.

Shinano Kenshi Co., Ltd. is pleased to announce the release of a new firmware for their DAISY Player PTN2. Version 3 has added support for: Microsoft Word .doc and unprotected WMA (Windows Media Audio) files.

The supported formats on PTN2 Version 3 are:

• DAISY 2.02, ANSI/NISO Z39.86/DAISY 3
• NLS, Bookshare, RFB&D
• TXT, HTML, DOC
• MP3, WAV, AMR-MB+, DAISY ADPCM2, OGG, WMA (unprotected)

Version 3 offers simplified operation and is more intuitive as it comes with faster touch key response and automatic bookmark numbering. More information is available on the PLEXTALK website.

The 4th European eAccessibility Forum will be held in Paris on April 12, 2010 and will provide an opportunity to hear first-hand about the eAccessibilty of public services from users with disabilities, public organizations and industries. The speakers are specialists involved in organizations representing users and consumers with disabilities, research organizations and companies operating in Europe or worldwide. The conference program is available on the 4th European eAccessibility Forum website.

The free upgrade for version 11 customers using a Dolphin Pen II are in the process of being uploaded to the Updates, Maps & Patches section of the Dolphin website and should be available for download within the next couple of days.

Find out what's new in version 11.50

Read the full version 11.50 press release

Download a free 30 day trial of SuperNova, Hal, Lunar or LunarPlus version 11.50

The Korean DAISY Consortium is made up of 21 member organizations including regional libraries and related organizations. A list of all 21 members is provided in the Korean DAISY Consortium entry in our Members area.