[Athen] Production of EPUB 3 Content?

[George Kerscher]

Hello,

Reproducing a post from the DAISY Consortium:
Dear Members, Friends and Supporters:

Tobi 2.0 is a production tool for DAISY 3 and EPUB 3 talking books, with a
dedicated editor for image descriptions, built-in content validators, MathML
support, and much more!

The DAISY Consortium is pleased to release Tobi v2.0, a free and open source
authoring tool designed to help users worldwide achieve excellence in
accessible publishing.

This major update includes support for EPUB 3 "Media Overlays", which is the
mainstream non-proprietary standard for "read aloud" publications. 
Just like DAISY, EPUB 3 enables the synchronization of human narration with
text, but it is based on modern HTML5 web standards. 
Tobi provides support for the DAISY Pipeline 2 content converters, to help
users migrate their existing material 
(DTBook XML, DAISY 3 and DAISY 2.02) to EPUB 3.  New Tobi projects can also
be created using regular EPUB 3 files (.epub extension), 
which can be text-only, or with full or partial audio.

Other significant improvements have been introduced since last major
release, based on feedback received from the DAISY community. 
This includes rendering of mathematical equations (with full support for the
MathML-in-DAISY profile). Tobi now also comes with integrated EPUB 3 and
DAISY 3 validators, 
which can be executed at import and export time. Support for MP4-AAC audio
has been added to facilitate the import of existing EPUB 3 Media Overlays. 
The audio recording modes have been greatly improved, now featuring control
of the synchronisation granularity based on pre-defined preferences. The
ability to import and quickly synchronize
existing (pre-recorded) audio makes it possible to combine various types of
workflows. In addition, Tobi allows users to edit audio snippets externally,

which means that other audio tools can be used along with Tobi. The
performance of the waveform display has been increased substantially. 
For peace of mind, the application now automatically creates backups of the
project file. 

To know more about all the new features and bug fixes, please visit:
http://www.daisy.org/tobi.

Tobi team would like to thank all contributors and supporters for their
valuable feedback in 2012.

Best
George


-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer Sutton [mailto:jsuttondc at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2013 3:59 PM
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network
Subject: Re: [Athen] Production of EPUB 3 Content?

Greetings:

For those interested in Epub 3, here's a book by Matt Garrish that 
you might find helpful:

http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920025283.do

In addition, it might be helpful if those interested contacted the 
IDPF directly. Since it's the standards-making body, and the 
organization has generally embraced accessibility, I'd hope they'd 
have a sense of the status of tools and such. Contacting the IDPF 
could surely raise the visibility among its members for the kinds of 
authoring and reading tools that the higher education community 
needs.  Start at:

www.idpf.org

Best,
Jennifer

At 02:36 PM 1/31/2013, you wrote:

>Hi Al,

>

>This is an excellent question. I have no great answer. There is no 

>EPUB3 movement underway at OSU, either within disability services or 

>within eLearning. It will likely start in eLearning before it starts 

>in our DS office.

>

>InDesign will produce EPUB3, but from all reports I've heard, it's 

>pretty broken. The sigil editor has EPUB 3 production on the radar 

>but it's not implemented, not even in beta, from what I can tell. 

>BlueGriffon EPUB Edition will produce EPUB3. You can try it for 

>free. It's about $265 to purchase (advertised prices are in Euros). 

>It could be the best bet for book production as EPUB3, at this 

>point. (Perhaps an InDesign to broken EPUB to BlueGriffon to fix 

>that borked EPUB?) If only iBooks Author created real rather than 

>bastardized EPUB3....

>

>And Al what are you recommending for reading EPUB 3? iBooks handles 

>a lot of the spec, but not all. There's Azardi, but it lacks screen 

>reader accessibility. And there's Adobe Digital Editions. ADE has 

>pretty decent initial EPUB3 support, but it doesn't render MathML or 

>the canvas element, not sure about SVG, but I know it doesn't handle 

>video or audio tags. The advantage of ADE is that it has good screen 

>reader support. Nook Study will open basic EPUB3 books and it has 

>the advantage of having built in reading+text-highlighting, but it 

>will crash if complex EPUB3 is opened in it. Then there's the 

>promising Readium project. It has very good EPUB3 support, but its 

>designed as a test bed platform not as a "production" reader and 

>it's not working well with any screen reader at this point, 

>including ChromeVox. It will support most MathML (through MathJax) 

>and supports video and audio (because it's running in Chrome, after 

>all). We need one killer EPUB3 player on Windows and Mac but it's 

>just not there yet. I'm hoping Adobe comes to the rescue. ADE has 

>been getting better. We were working the B&N on Nook Study 

>accessibility for a short time but that effort fell through.

>

>I'd love to hear what you guys are doing.

>

>Best,

>

>

>ken

>--

>Ken Petri

>Program Director, OSU Web Accessibility Center

>102D Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Avenue, Columbus, Ohio  43210

>Office: 614.292.1760 | Mobile: 614.218.1499 | Fax: 614.292.4190

><http://wac.osu.edu>http://wac.osu.edu | 

><mailto:petri.1 at osu.edu>petri.1 at osu.edu

>

>

>On Thu, Jan 31, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Al Puzzuoli 

><<mailto:alpuzz at msu.edu>alpuzz at msu.edu> wrote:

>

>Just curious as to whether anyone is currently producing E-Text 

>content in EPUB 3, or whether you have begun looking at how to do so 

>in future?  We are currently exploring the possibility of 

>transitioning  our base format to EPUB 3 but at this point, we're 

>not even sure which software out there would provide the best solution.

>

>Any comments would be very welcome,

>

>Thanks,

>

>

>

>

>

>Al Puzzuoli

>

>Michigan State University

>

>Information 

>Technologist 

><http://www.rcpd.msu.edu>http://www.rcpd.msu.edu

>

>Resource Center for Persons with 

>Disabilities  <tel:517-884-1915>517-884-1915 120 Bessey Hall East 

>Lansing, MI  48824-1033

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>_______________________________________________

>athen-list mailing list

><mailto:athen-list at mailman1.u.washington.edu>athen-list at mailman1.u.washingt

on.edu

>http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list

>

>

>_______________________________________________

>athen-list mailing list

>athen-list at mailman1.u.washington.edu

>http://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/athen-list