NISO Members Approve Project to Revise Digital Talking Book Standard

Call for Participation Focused on Publishers and Libraries with Digital Content

Baltimore, MD - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has approved a project that will revise Specifications for the Digital Talking Book (ANSI/NISO Z39.86). Integral to this process is the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) Consortium, maintenance agency for the so-called DAISY/NISO standard.
George Kerscher, Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium, prepared the revision proposal. In introducing the value of updated Specifications for the DTB, he stated: "It is expected that the next revision of the DAISY Standard will help tame the chaos of digital publishing by providing an extensible, flexible system that everybody can use for information and knowledge dissemination." The standard will approach the challenge from two directions: distribution and authoring.

Todd Carpenter, Managing Director of NISO, noted, "The revision will modularize the standard and update it to take advantage of improved technologies that enable a significantly better user experience by improving the existing model for authoring and consumption of accessible multimedia documents, and also by facilitating the creation and distribution of rich interactive presentations."

A working group roster is now being formed. Parties who want to join this working group, or those wishing to be part of the affiliated interest group, should contact Karen Wetzel, NISO's Standards Program Manager, at kwetzel@niso.org.

About the National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org.