Playback technology
DAISY has many advantages over traditional audio books.
What is DAISY?
A DAISY book is a digital talking book that may contain both sound and text. DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information SYstem. DAISY books can be read on a portable digital playback device or on a computer with DAISY software.
The DAISY System is transforming the reading and learning experiences of people who have a print disability in over 50 countries around the world.
To learn more about the DAISY Consortium, you can visit their website at www.daisy.org. You can also download free and trial versions of DAISY software for your computer. Simply select the 'Tools' link and then select 'Playback Tools'.
Advantages of DAISY
DAISY books offer numerous advantages over books on tape and commercial books on CD:
- DAISY books give people who are blind or print-disabled an improved way to read. With links between text and narration, DAISY books allow a reader to go to directly to specific sections, chapters or pages, and place bookmarks. This ability to move around the book is not available with books on tape or CD.
- When you finish reading, a digital playback device will "remember" where you stopped, and resume play at that same place when you start to read again.
- DAISY books have better sound quality when compared to books on tape. The digital recording eliminates the traditional hiss and background noise found on cassette, especially books that have been played many times. This is important to readers who may have some hearing impairment.
- An entire DAISY book can be contained on one CD, whereas books on tape span multiple cassettes (and commercial books on CD span multiple CDs). One CD eliminates the frustration of sorting multiple tapes for low vision readers and prevents the hassle of missing or damaged parts of a book. Up to 50 hours of audio may be contained on one DAISY CD - the equivalent of more than 30 standard cassettes.
In order to provide these features, DAISY books require a special digital playback device (similar to a portable CD player) or software program. However, many digital playback devices also play standard audio books and music on CDs, and MP3 files.
The digital playback devices gives prompts and describes the function of each button so there is no need to remember to many instructions.