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DAISY Planet Newsletter - May 2021

Welcome to the DAISY Planet newsletter, your source of news and information related to accessible reading and publishing.
First a quick reminder: You are receiving this message because you have previously subscribed to receive a DAISY Consortium Newsletter. If you would like to change how you receive these messages you can find links at the bottom of this document.
illustration representing people coming together

DAISY Annual General Meeting

The DAISY Annual General Meeting is when we transact the formal business required under our articles and governing regulations, but it’s also when we like to feature some of the incredible work taking place around the world in the DAISY community.
We are running the meeting on May 26 as a webinar to allow many more members and friends to come along. Please also invite any of your colleagues who might be interested, or indeed any other organisations in your region interested in accessible publishing and reading. All are welcome and it is straightforward to register for the event with this link:
https://daisy.org/agm2021
The AGM is on May 26, starting at 12 UTC (500 PDT, 800 EDT, 1300 BST, 1400 CEST)
GAAD logo

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2021

GAAD takes place on May 20th this year and we encourage all our readers and members to explore ways to celebrate this awareness building event within their own organizations. Use our resources, event ideas and activity planning guide to encourage your colleagues to think about their approach to accessibility and keep us posted on how you choose to acknowledge GAAD!
The DAISY Article on GAAD has lots of information about the day and links to useful resources.
laptop showing a DAISY webinar

DAISY Webinars

The DAISY Webinar series on accessible publishing and reading has been a real positive to come out of the global challenges of the last year. The 26 webinars are fully documented with the recording, transcript, slide deck and links to related resources all available on the DAISY website:
https://daisy.org/webinars
Over the last year we’ve coordinated presentations on a diverse range of topics from smart speakers to future standards, from practical webinars on image descriptions to creating accessible documents. Our thanks to the many presenters who have contributed, including Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and many others, all of whom generously shared their expertise with the DAISY community.
We’re currently taking a short break from regular webinars, and while we have some fantastic sessions lined up for our return we would love to hear your suggestions.
Do you have a webinar idea you’d like to present, or a topic you would like to see us cover?
Please send your suggestions to [email protected]
photo of the ABC award from 2020

WIPO ABC International Excellence Award 2021: Call for Nominations

The nominations are currently open for the Accessible Books Consortium annual awards. As in previous years there are two awards, one for publishers, the second for projects or initiatives, each of which should demonstrate outstanding leadership and achievements in advancing the accessibility of commercial ebooks or other digital publications for persons who are blind, visually impaired or otherwise print-disabled. If you know an organization who should be celebrated for their work you can nominate them on the ABC website.

Quick Links

Articles and resources:
Recent tool updates:
  • Ace by DAISY  - the Accessibility Checker for EPUB has received updates to both the desktop and command line versions, bringing security updates and improved testing using the new Deque Axe library. Content from of the Publishing Knowledge Base has also been updated.
  • EPUBCheck 4.2.5 - the EPUB conformance checker received a minor update, but comes with a new support website.
  • Thorium Reader - the latest update includes support for DAISY 3 format titles. 

Upcoming Events

  • Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2021 – May 20, 2021
    How will you be celebrating GAAD this year? We’ve put together a set of resources and ideas that you may find useful. Share your GAAD stories with us for our event overview.
  • Digita11y Accessible GAAD 2021 - May 20, 2021
    Join this free half-day virtual event featuring accessibility industry speakers raising awareness in celebration of GAAD 2021.
  • Basic Accessibility Fundamentals Bootcamp – May 20, 2021
    In celebration of GAAD 2021 Deque is offering free online access to its basic accessibility fundamentals training bootcamp.
  • World Blindness Summit - June 18 - 30, 2021
    Register for free for 3 days of conferences, webinars and presentations from over 100 speakers!
  • National Federation of the Blind Annual Convention – July 6, 2021
    The NFB Annual Convention is the largest gathering of blind people in the world and has become the premier event for training, support and information for this community. Join this event for an action-packed 4 days.
Further events are listed on the DAISY website

Your Views and News...

We would love to hear your suggestions and feedback to help shape what we do, and we're always keen to share your news, events and developments with the global DAISY community.
Just send the details to: [email protected]

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