AccessibleMediaCenter.com

About the TechAdapt Accessible Media Center

TAMC was born out of a need to provide easy and effective conversion options for NIMAS and DAISY file sets. It is intended to allow state and local educational agencies, parents, teachers, and others with access to NIMAS and DAISY file sets with the ability to convert books into consumer-ready formats that do not require the use of additional software or hardware players.

Currently, TAMC can produce two different file types from NIMAS and DAISY input:

• Rich Text Format (RTF) files, which can be opened by any of the thousands of applications or hardware devices that understand this file format. RTF has been used in conjunction with screen readers, software magnifiers and other devices for many years, and it remains one of the most widely-used file formats ever. These RTFs can be used in many different ways:
  • with existing braille transcription packages to allow NIMAS or DAISY input to be used in the braille transcription process. This may be important for those companies or agencies which choose not to upgrade their braille transcription software at this time.
  • as input to audio production tools such as NextUp's TextAloud and NaturalSoft's Natural Reader.
  • with existing hardware devices that can interpret RTF but may not yet support DAISY
  • with screen readers and software magnifiers
• HTML, the popular file format understood by every Web browser. HTML-formatted books produced with TAMC include not only the content of the book, but navigation panes that allow users to easily find information by heading or page number. In addition, the background color and the font color and size of the content can be adjusted for maximum contrast and readability. TAMC's HTML books require only a Web browser to read - no network connection or external software or plugins are required.

In the future, TAMC will be extended to allow the production of other media formats, such as audio and braille. Requests from our clients for other functionality are always welcome.

Samples of the TAMC HTML output using the CAST NIMAS Exemplars can be found in our Samples section.

Why You Should Use TAMC

We believe that TAMC is a viable option for many school districts, educational service centers (ESCs), and other education professionals who want to produce accessible media from NIMAS and DAISY files. Here's why:

• TAMC's user interface is browser-based, even though it runs on your local computer. This makes it easy to use.
• Both the TAMC software and basic support for TAMC are free. Additional support packages, training, customization services and other options are available for an additional fee.
• Media produced using TAMC does not require any additional software to be purchased, installed or maintained. This saves you money, time, effort and hassle because there's no software procurement process, no additional work for your Information Technology (IT) department, and no ongoing maintenance costs.
• TAMC's HTML output (the primary option) is highly customizable. Students can change background colors and font sizes at will, and the individuals that use TAMC to generate HTML output can customize the default layout and look-and-feel of the output using HTML and CSS skills that are widely available.
• Students do not need to learn new skills in order to use accessible media. Many if not most students already have some experience in using the primary features of a browser, of word processors, and of audio players; these skills can be applied easily to using accessible media generated by TAMC. There is no new software to learn.
• There is no additional media service to subscribe to. Unlike software provided by other accessible media services, your use of TAMC is not dependent on a subscription to any other service. If you have DAISY and NIMAS files -- regardless of whether you developed them yourself, purchased them or received them via the NIMAC -- you can use TAMC to produce accessible media.
• TAMC promotes standardization. With a free and easy-to-use option such as TAMC available, NIMAS and DAISY media producers are encouraged to standardize their approach to developing these file sets so that the resulting media will display optimally and be used consistently. Other software tools have inconsistent presentation of DAISY and NIMAS files, which makes it more difficult for NIMAS and DAISY producers to generate media that displays well and can be used in consistent ways.

How It Works

TAMC uses a combination of standardized technologies, open-source tools and commercial software. It presents a clean, simple HTML-based interface which is accessible by many screen reader programs. Conversions to any of the supported formats require only three steps: specify your input and output locations, indicate which options you'd like used by the conversion process, and perform the conversion. Conversions take only a few minutes.

You can control the output by specifying a number of different options:

• The NIMAS or DAISY level at which you wish to create new output files. This is useful for automatically breaking the NIMAS or DAISY book into units, chapters or lessons based on how the NIMAS or DAISY file is constructed. You also have the option of placing the each major section of the book (frontmatter, bodymatter and rearmatter) in a file by itself.
• The language used in the input file.
• The font and font size used to display the output
• Whether or not you want to include images from the input in the output files, and at what relative size the images should be displayed.
• Whether or not you want NIMAS or DAISY production notes (prodnotes) included in the output files.
• The relative/maximum size of images.

In addition to the above, you can use one of our pre-built editing scripts to solve common problems with NIMAS and DAISY files. You can develop your own editing scripts for use with TAMC, or you can have TechAdapt or another service provider develop them for you using the widely-used XSLT language.

For HTML, you can also specify:

• whether you would like TAMC to generate tables of contents by heading and/or by page number, and what level of headings should be included in the TOC.
• whether or not TAMC should include facilities to allow users to change the background color, font size and color, etc.

Licensing and Support

The TechAdapt Accessible Media Center software is available free of charge to state and local educational agencies, institutions of higher education, and other education professionals. Other interested parties should contact Chris von See at chris@techadapt.com to inquire. Source code is not currently available, but if you have enhancements you'd like to see or if you are interested in participating in the development of TAMC please contact us.

Currently only email support is available, and support is free of charge. We will make every effort to respond to email support requests as quickly as possible. If you are considering a large deployment of TAMC or would like to make arrangements for telephone support, please contact us at support@accessiblemediacenter.techadapt.com.

Downloading and Using the TechAdapt Accessible Media Center

You can download the TAMC software by using this link. If you have any problems downloading the software, please contact support@accessiblemediacenter.com

Most of the capabilities of TAMC are available on all of the major platforms, including Microsoft Windows XP, Mac OS X and many Linux systems. A Java Runtime Library (JRE) version 1.5 or later is required; for your convenience, download packages are available which include the JRE so that it need not be downloaded and installed separately. TAMC has not yet been tested with Windows Vista, although we do not anticipate problems.

The only known TAMC functional restriction is that RTF generation support is currently available only on Microsoft Windows platforms. If you require the ability to create RTF from NIMAS or DAISY file sets or if you have a need to create other accessible media from NIMAS or DAISY input, please contact the TAMC support staff at support@accessiblemediacenter.techadapt.com.

Feedback

Your feedback is important! If you would like to see new or different features in TAMC, would like to convert NIMAS and DAISY files to other formats, or just want to tell us how you like (or dislike) TAMC, please contact us at feedback@accessiblemediacenter.techadapt.com