DAISY Pipeline SOftware Provides Free Text to Speech Conversion

"I have a university class starting next week and have scanned my textbook into Word and used the "Save As DAISY " plug in to convert it all. I can't seem to figure out what to do from there to get it finished. Can you help me?"
I had this question from the UK this week (I am paraphrasing it a little). The question came from a student with Dyslexia who is not able to qualify for the files she needs and needed to get this text converted ASAP.
I had done a series of posts last June '08 on Converting Text with DAISY where some great advice was shared by DAISY Consortium developer Romain Deltour. I had meant to use his information to do a tutorial with steps for this process and never got around to it. Now with this question, I had a reason to get something organized, written and available.
I would like to get it perfected as a more visual tutorial and maybe a video one down the road, but for now, I have created a free pdf with links to the tool downloads and the steps start to finish from the Word text to an Mp3, wav or DTB 2.02 file that will play in DTB players and on Windows Media Player, iTunes, Quicktime Player, etc.
You can access the tutorial on my NL2L website at the bottom of the Training page at this link.
Here is also a helpful link to DAISY Consortium with all their conversion tools.

Don't Forget!
"Romancing the Phone" Courting and romance sparked a new phone speech assistant for the speech impaired - a visit with Jay and Melissa Blocksom. Tonight, Friday, January 30 at 7 PM Pacific. Blog Talk Radio/No Limits 2 Learning Live!

AT Blog Carnival for February - call for submissions on "perfect pairings" of AT.
Deadline for submissions is Friday, Feb 20. The carnival will post on Monday, Feb. 23.

All the best to you!

Lon

Lon Thornburg is an assistive technology specialist and professional development trainer who lives in Oregon and serves 12 districts in 7 counties. He hosts the No Limits 2 Learning Blog and The No Limits 2 Learning Live Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio. He is sharing as a contributing writer on LD LIVE!



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DAISY Consortium Leadership Share the Vision: Interview on Information Accessibility

Secretary General of DAISY Consortium will be my guest this afternoon at 2 PM Pacific on No Limits 2 Learning Live on Blog Talk Radio.
Ever since I worked on several pieces concerning the process of converting text to the DAISY format using MS Word last spring, I have had some wonderful discourse with folks from the DAISY consortium. They proved their ability to be on top of the online discussion concerning their tools and public opinion when they left comments clarifying some technical issues I had with converting text.
I commended them for their involvement at this level and the team expressed their thanks for the positive input. You see, we forget that there are folks hard at work dedicating days and weeks and months of time to build software to make our lives easier. Many times their efforts go unnoticed and only the negative responses are all that get heard.
I want to share that the DAISY Consortium team has gone above and beyond in their supporting their tools and technology. In light of this, I am very honored to be able to present an interview with George Kerscher Ph.D. and Secretary General of DAISY Consortium and Lynn Leith, the editor of the DAISY Planet online newsletter and Head of Information Services. Lynn has a long background in Canada with the CNIB Library for the blind in audio master production. She has been great to correspond with me and work on setting up this interview.

We will be discussing the NIMAS standards, an update for the MS Word plug -in, strategies for using DAISY files for learning supports, as well as future goals and projects. We will also be talking about the WBU treaty proposal for WIPO -World Intellectual PropertyOrganization taking place on Nov 3 and their thoughts on its implications.
I hope you will join us today, Tuesday, October 29th at 2 PM Pacific time at No Limits 2 Learning Live for the interview.
As always, the archive will be up after the live stream for folks to access from the player on my sidebar at the No Limits to Learning blog or from the talk show archive at the link above. I am also starting to put all the archives on my No Limits 2 Learning.com site under the archives link along with many other resources.
Remember also that the Assistive Technology Blog Carnival "Mad Scientist" Edition will be up on Halloween day and there will be some fun surprises.

All the best to you!
Lon

Lon Thornburg is an assistive technology specialist and professional development trainer who lives in Oregon and serves 12 districts in 7 counties. He hosts the No Limits 2 Learning Blog and The No Limits 2 Learning Live Talk Show on Blog Talk Radio. He is sharing as a contributing writer on LD LIVE!