TechAdapt Accessible Media Center Frequently Asked Questions
This section contains answers to frequently-asked questions about the TechAdapt Accessible Media Center. If you have a question that is not found here, please contact us at support@accessiblemediacenter.techadapt.com
General Questions
- What is the TechAdapt Accessible Media Center (TAMC)?
- The TechAdapt Accessible Media Center (TAMC) is a tool designed to allow the conversion of NIMAS and DAISY files from their XML-based format into formats which are more readily accessible by end users. It is specifically intended to create "user-friendly" books that do not require any additional software to be used, saving education professionals, Information Technology (IT) personnel, and other uses time, effort and money by eliminating the need to acquire, install and maintain additional software.
- Why did TechAdapt create TAMC?
- There are two reasons why TechAdapt created TAMC. First, we believe that there is a need for a cost-effective solution to enable the use of content from NIMAS and DAISY by organizations or individuals with limited funds or manpower and by those organizations that do not use Microsoft Windows. We attempted to satisfy this need by developing a tool - TAMC - that enables users to easily generate end-user-ready content that can be used without expensive, hard-to-use or hard to maintain software.
As a company, TechAdapt has been successful beyond our wildest dreams in satisfying the needs of education professions that need accessible content. In creating TAMC and making it free of charge, we sought to give back to the community that has supported us (and, we hope, will continue to support us in the future). We truly hope that TAMC is valuable to its users, and we also hope to receive feedback from users so that we can add feature and make TAMC and its generated output even more useful.
Downloading TAMC
- How do I get TAMC?
- While TAMC is in its beta period, you can contact Chris von See at chris@techadapt.com to request a copy. Once the beta test period is over, we will make a download link available at accessiblemediacenter.techadapt.com.
- Does TAMC cost anything?
- Downloading and using TAMC is completely free of charge. Basic email support is also free of charge, but if you would like a more comprehensive support package please contact us at support@accessiblemediacenter.techadapt.com for rates.
Using TAMC
- What can I do with TAMC?
- Current, TAMC can accept NIMAS and DAISY files which conform to the ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005-2 (DAISY 2005-2) specification and convert them into Rich Text Format (RTF) and HTML files. In the future, support for the creation of audio, braille and other formats will be added; the exact order in which these features will be added will depend on demand.
- Where can the output from TAMC be used?
- The HTML output from TAMC can be used on any platform or in any reasonably current browser that support HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Note that we are currently experiencing problems with changing foreground/background colors and font sizes in Safari on Mac OS X. We hope that this problem will be resolved soon.
RTF output can be used in any product which supports this format.
- Does TAMC's output provide all of the functionality of a software DAISY reader?
- Not currently. While TAMC's output is suitable for many uses, it does not currently provide support for the following DAISY features:
- word-level or sentence-level highlighting
- self-voicing output
- Skippability/escapability of structures
- Bookmarking
We hope to provide at least some of these feature in future releases, but some (such as self-voicing output) may be quite difficult to provide in a browser environment without additional software.
Getting Support for TAMC
- How do I get support for TAMC?
- Free basic support for TAMC can be obtained by sending an email to support@accessiblemediacenter.techadapt.com.
©2008 TechAdapt, Inc.