Advisory Committee Meeting 10-09-13
Agenda
ATN 2.0
- Went live on August 12th
- Over 28,000 requests made in the new system, on target for over 70,000 requests this year.
- Over 1,900 school members
- Over 335,000 titles
- Over 10,000 stored files
- User survey:
- 82% said the new system is easier to use
- 14% said its about the same
- 4% said its not as easy
- ATN 2.1
- Forum will be integrated into application
- Improved message handling
Discussion: ATN 2.0 is built on an open-source platform allowing greater customization. Many improvements were made for DSS members. ATN 2.1 update will focus on publisher workflow. From a survey, feedback from users has been highly positive. Questions from publisher about procedural issue tabled for off-line discussion. There was a question about the file formats that can be requested. Bob commented that some schools did not like formats being listed that were not available, and that publishers are not providing EPUB through ATN at this time. Ideally, there would be a better way to document the increasing demand for EPUB as an accessible format other than ATN requests.
ATN Membership
- Issues with international memberships
Discussion: Bob pointed out that issue has been raised before, as far back as 2009 Advisory Meeting. There are various technical and procedural issues with extending ATN membership internationally if publisher membership supported it. One possible variant would be a separate AccessText site for non-US countries.
DAP Update
- STEPP Grant ended 9/30/13
- 'Introducing DAP' video completed
Discussion: George Kerscher mentioned Schema.org work being done to improve search results for accessible materials.
AAP EPUB 3 Implementation Project
- The initiative’s goal is to accelerate the across-the-board adoption of the EPUB 3 format in the consumer market by identifying and implementing what stakeholders consider to be the core set of baseline features critical to the format’s acceptance.
- http://www.publishers.org/press/113/
EDUPUB: A Workshop on Digital Publishing for Education
- Establishing a globally interoperable, accessible, open ecosystem for e-Textbooks and other Digital Learning Materials via EPUB 3 and the Open Web Platform
- October 29-30, 2013, Boston, MA
- http://idpf.org/edupub-2013
Discussion: Both of these industry-sponsored events have accessibility themes, which is a sign of the importance of the issue and the challenges involved in implementation. Mention was made of a meeting on Readium to be held before EDUPUB.
Accessing Higher Ground Conference
- 16th Annual Accessible Media, Web and Technology Conference
- November 4-8, 2013, Westminster, CO
- http://accessinghigherground.org/index.html
Discussion: Bob will be presenting with Gerardo Capiel from Benetech on 11/6/13.
Next Meeting
- TBA February 2014