EVERYBODY, including the disabled, deserves the right to use and experience information and communications technology tools or innovations to boost their life. But over the past decades, it can be said that most technology innovations tend to overlook the need of this special community in terms of usage.

Can you count how many software or hardware produced so far can be used by the blind or the deaf so they can be part of the working community?

Well, Microsoft has taken a noble approach to enable the disabled, especially the visually impaired, to make use of technology in their daily lives. It is collaborating with the Digital Accessible Information System (Daisy) Consortium on a joint standards-based development project that will make it possible for computer users who are blind or print-disabled to make better use of assistive technology in their daily lives.

What the software giant has created is a downloadable plug-in for Microsoft Office Word that can translate Open XML-based documents into Daisy XML, the foundation of the globally accepted Daisy standard for reading and publishing navigatible multimedia content.

The project will enable the translation of millions of Open XML documents into Daisy XML, which is the lingua franca for digital talking books.

According to Microsoft Malaysia’s national technology officer Dr Dzaharudin Mansor, with the availability of the Open XML-Daisy converter, any document written in a Microsoft format, even binary, can now be converted into the Daisy format from or through the Open XML standard.

“People with disabilities now have access to a lot more documents that exist today. Furthermore, new documents can now be easily and readily converted into Daisy. This will benefit Malaysians with reading disability tremendously.”

Dzaharudin pointed out that there are many products in the market that can present Daisy-compliant documents and that Microsoft does not compete with these vendors; “rather, we hope to work closely with them to enable the community with reading disability to have access to a wider range of reading materials that already exist through the use of the Open XML-Daisy converter”.

He also said what will be needed is awareness on these standards and tools as well as on how to leverage on them.

At times when we hear or read in the media about handicapped people not being able to get jobs despite their qualification, the availability of such technology as the Open XML-Daisy converter may perhaps change the situation otherwise. Let’s hope that this initiative is the beginning of more meaningful technology innovations that will benefit all people, regardless of ability or disability.