Open Source Software

There is a new release of the AMIS 2.6 Jaws scripts from Avneesh Singh. It has a few improvements, although it is not a major release. Here's what is new:

- Displaying of help viewer and JAWS-specific dialogs (for making AMIS/JAWS combination more friendly for new users).
- Activation of open file dialog so as to fill absence of AMIS self-voicing in this dialog.

You can find the download link on the AMIS homepage.

The Urakawa open-source project aims at providing a Software Development Toolkit (SDK) for accessible multimedia, as well as real-world DAISY applications built with the SDK, such as Obi, the audio-only Digital Talking Book authoring tool.

DFA contributes to this software project with the firm goal of delivering quality open-source software for DAISY multimedia and beyond (open-standards like SMIL, motion pictures, etc.). The Urakawa software is available for free, and is designed to support multiple languages, including double-byte script encoding. Such universal reach will not only empower the end-users (content producers), but will also enable software developers to contribute actively, for example by specializing the software to meet specific applications needs.

AMIS, the Adaptive Multimedia Information System, originally created by JSRPD and now maintained and developed by the DAISY-for-All (DFA) Project, has two announcements.

May 2-5, 2007. Bangkok, Thailand

The workshop had been organized by Marisa DeMeglio with Daniel Weck and Julien Quint. 10 participants from 5 countries localized AMIS into their respective languages. New language packs of Chinese, Thai, Filipino, Malay and Nepali is available for download at http://daisy.org/project/amis.

Report of the AMIS Translation Workshop from April 11 to April 15 2006

Venue: National Association for the Blind, Sector 5, R.K Puram, New Delhi-110022.

Dipendra Manocha (dipendram@vsnl.net)
Assistant Project Manager in New Delhi

A five day workshop was held in New Delhi with the objective of preparation of language packs for 7 languages for the open source DAISY Digital Talking Book Player - AMIS. These language packs include translation of complete self voicing user interface of AMIS and also the full text full audio help book for the software. As a result of this workshop a new version of AMIS software will be released with complete self voicing user interface for the following languages:

1. Hindi
2. Tamil
3. Urdu
4. Arabic
5. Indonesian
6. Vietnamese
7. Bangla

The AMIS software is already available for the following languages: Malay, Nepali, Sinhala, French, Japanese, and Thai. These language packs were created during the 2005 DFA Open Source Workshop.

January 23, 2006. Saitama, Japan

A software meeting regarding Braille plug-in and accessible IME projects for AMIS was held with Marisa, Jun Ishikawa, Daniel Weck , and Misako Nomura. AMIS and Braille/IME were discussed.

October 23, 2005

AMIS 2.0, the latest open source DAISY playback software developed by AMIS Development Coordinator, Marisa DeMeglio. It is now available for download at http://daisy.org/project/amis.

Highlights of AMIS include its self-voicing interface, plug-in support, bookmarking, variable playback speed, full text searching ability, and support for skippability and escapability. AMIS supports unicode and is available in several languages, including Hindi, Thai, Malay, and Sinhala.

AMIS was originally developed by the Japanese Society for Rehabilitation of Persons with Disabilities. Development continues under the DAISY for All project, funded by the Nippon Foundation.

June 2005 Amsterdam, Netherlands

The collaboration meeting was held in Amsterdam to deal with AMIS and Ambulant integration issues.
Ambulant, an open source SMIL player from
CWI (the Research Center for Computer Science and Mathematics) was experimentally embedded in AMIS.

May 5-10, 2005

Bangkok, Thailand

A localization training workshop that focused on the new open source AMIS DAISY Player, developed as part of the DAISY for All Project, was held in Bangkok, Thailand during May, 2005. The 6 day workshop, consisting of lecture and hands-on work, introduced the participants to open source concepts, the new generation AMIS and the localization process. By the end of the workshop, participants had created preliminary, localized versions of AMIS in Sinhala, Nepali, Hindi, Malay, Thai, Japanese and French. The hard work of the participants, instructors, and support staff contributed to a successful workshop, which included such notable results as the creation of the first accessible Windows application in Sinhalese using Unicode.

The final day of the workshop included a seminar on Information Accessibility, with two presentations entitled "Information and Communications Technology for All: Continuing Advances in Accessible Information Standards" and "Considering the Human Factor in Disaster Preparedness: How Accessible Design of Preparedness and Warning Systems Can Benefit All".