A Paradigm shift of knowledge sharing infrastructure for persons with disabilities and wider community in developing countries Hiroshi Kawamura Board member of the DAISY Consortium (Past President) Vice President of the Assistive Technology Development Organization hkawa@atdo.jp http://www.daisy.org http://www.normanet.ne.jp/~atdo/ Phone and Fax: +81-3-5384-7207 Abstracts DAISY has critical role to realize equal access to information and knowledge for persons with reading disabilities in developing countries. The author shares the vision and activities of the DAISY Consortium, which supports implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities through evolution of the publishing paradigm. Use cases of accessible publications in education and Disaster Risk Reduction are presented. Collaboration of DAISY and NVDA is discussed. 0. Demonstration of DAISY by AMIS and Easy Reader Express 0.1 Downloading of AMIS from JSRPD DAISY Home page 0.2 Downloading contents with Easy Reader Express from ATDO Home page 0.3 Presentation of contents: 0.3.1 Resource manual on HIV/AIDS 0.3.2 How to protect yourself from Tsunami 0.3.3 Japanese vertical writing with ruby contents 0.4 Navigation 0.4.1 Table of contents 0.4.2 Headings 0.4.3 Full text search 0.4.4 Page jump 0.5 Accessibility 0.5.1 Variable speed 0.5.2 Synchronization 0.5.3 Reflowing 0.5.4 Magnifying 0.5.5 Narration by human voice and/or TTS 1. DAISY Consortium 1.1 Vision: The DAISY Consortium envisions a world where people with print disabilities have equal access to information and knowledge, without delay or additional expense. 1.2 Mission: The DAISY Consortium's mission is to develop and promote international standards and technologies which enable equal access to information and knowledge by all people with print disabilities and which also benefit the wider community. 1.3 Brief history In 1995 at the General Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in Istanbul, an open emergency meeting on digital talking book standardization based on Swedish DAISY System was held by the Standing Committee of the Section of Libraries for the Blind (SLB) ( http://www.ifla.org/en/lpd). The meeting concluded that the Section should have a proposed recommendation for an open, non-proprietary international standards for Digital Talking Books within 2 years to guarantee the international exchange of talking books, better reading experiences including capacity of navigation, and preservation of talking books virtually forever. 6 active member organizations of the Section formulated the DAISY Consortium in 1996 to materialize the decision. Thanks to active 1,000 blind and visually impaired talking book users in 30 countries, those 6 international foundation members and funding support by the Japanese Government, the Consortium could carry out an international field test of proto-type DAISY players and received invaluable feedback from both users and producers of talking books to create a functional specifications of the DAISY Standard that was accepted by the SLB/IFLA at 1997 IFLA General Conference in Copenhagen. In the meantime, 3 private companies, Labyrinten AB in Sweden, Shinanokenshi in Japan and Productivity Works in the U. S., agreed to collaborate with the DAISY Consortium and make DAISY specifications available to anyone who wish to use. When the Consortium finalized the functional requirements, the Consortium discussed how to make the standards open, non-proprietary and inter-operable at an international meeting held in Sigtuna, Sweden. This fruitful international meeting resulted in the current principle of standards development of the Consortium: developing an open standard based on existing open standards. Following this principle, DAISY file format specifications had been changed from PC based multimedia technology to W3C standards based multimedia. In support of the decision of the Consortium, Japanese Society for Persons with Disabilities made a contract with 3 supporting companies already mentioned to develop the SigtunaDAR, a tool for DAISY contents production, and LP Player, a player for DAISY contents, to be distributed around the world free of charge including developing countries. Our immediate target of DAISY file specifications development was a standard which synchronize html files with audio files. Therefore, the Consortium members and supporting companies put best effort on development of the W3C SMIL, Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, which became official W3C recommendation in 1998. DAISY is the first and best popular application of the W3C SMIL specifications. Scince then, the DAISY Consortium has been keeping this standard development principle to develop DAISY Standards for persons with print disabilities and wider community. Another good example of this standard development strategy is shown is the DAISY4 and SMIL3.0 development. When the Consortium identified the needs on motion picture support in DAISY reading, we joined the SMIL revision to create the DAISY Profile in SMIL3.0. It took 4 years of work. After the completion of the SMIL revision which provides necessary modules to further develop DAISY, we started revision of DAISY which resulted in a joint development with EPUB3. DAISY originally stood for Digital Audio-based Information System. As the DAISY Standards evolved from audio to synchronized audio, text and graphics based on the requirements of users, it was changed to the current Digital Accessible Information System. To date, DAISY Consortium is a legal entity under Swiss Law which has 20 Full Members that are not-for-profit with voting rights, Associate Members, Company Friends and Developers, Publishers, Educators and Advocates and Individual Supporters across the World. 2. What makes DAISY different 2.1 Limitations of Electronic Text and Audio Today Typical audio talking books do not allow the reader to move through the book easily. You can listen from beginning to end, but not much more, resulting in frustration and wasted time. While it is possible to navigate through some electronic text files, this option may or may not be accessible to everyone. Electronic content that lacks navigation makes reading slower and less efficient than it has to be. Navigable DAISY content that has electronic text available, either with or without audio, may permit readers to examine the spelling of words, or search the text, using a software player on a PC. When DAISY full text is available, some software players also offer users the ability to display and highlight the text of the book on the screen. 2.2 The Best Way to Read and Publish DAISY books can increase reading speed and improve reading efficiency. With a simple action, you can jump to the chapter you need instantly. The DAISY standards provide flexibility. You can listen to a DAISY book on a PC while reading the text with a braille display. Or you can listen to a DAISY book with a dedicated player at home or when traveling. There are different kinds of DAISY books based on the DAISY Standards, ranging from audio only to text only, with full text and full audio as the fullest and richest reading experience for the end-user. It is even possible to produce hard-copy braille from a full text DAISY book. Although the DAISY Standards were developed with books and people who are not able to read current publications in mind, we can envision many applications for it: - Imagine lectures that are available as audio and text files simultaneously: "Biography of Senator Monthian Buntan" (DAISY with ERExpress for Windows) (https://gumsafe.com/l/?5g) - How about emergency preparedness materials in accessible multimedia that may tell how to protect yourself from Tsunamis and where to evacuate to everybody including persons who may not read and understand printed documents:“How to protect yourself from a Tsunami” (http://atdo.sakura.ne.jp/files/DAISY/share/tsunami_urakawa_en_exe_mp3.zip) - Or, think about how synchronized text and audio, and soon including motion pictures and sign languages1, would be valuable in sharing information and knowledge for education including science and technology, job development, cultural life, well being, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and critical decision making in a multilingual and multicultural community where everybody may take part in the process of truly inclusive society development: Experimental video presentation on dyslexia by Mr. Tadashi Kouyama with caption and sign language edited by Mr. Hajime Numata (in Japanese). (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKjuZkAS0kk) 3. DAISY in Education 3.1 DAISY Offers a Literacy Revolution Studies by and for educators identify three basic styles of learning: auditory, tactile/kinetic, and visual. Auditory learners prefer lectures and discussions to textbooks. They interpret meaning by paying close attention to tone of voice, pitch, and speed. Tactile/kinetic learners prefer a hands-on approach. They may be easily distracted by their need for exploration and activity. Visual learners often think in pictures and prefer graphical representations of concepts through charts, diagrams, or tables. Some individuals can't be categorized into these three simple learning styles; they may require a combination of two styles to understand and comprehend new material. Others may have to adapt to new learning styles as their lifestyles change. For example, a visual learner who is experiencing the effects of aging on their eyesight, may need to shift toward a more auditory learning style. Conversely, a youngster who has successfully learned through hands-on, tactile methods may need to adapt to more visual and auditory learning as they enter higher education. By synchronizing audio, text, and soon, video, DAISY multimedia can address the needs of each type of learner. DAISY hardware players, much like CD players or MP3 players, can be of great assistance to auditory learners who benefit from audio playback, whether presented through a text-to-speech feature or through human narration. Full-text, full-audio DAISY books synchronize the audio playback with written text displayed on a computer screen to the benefit of visual learners. Easy navigation of information produced in DAISY offers tactile/kinetic learners the opportunity to explore documents and interact with information in a way that holds their attention and improves their learning. People with print disabilities such as blindness or dyslexia have benefited from DAISY's synchronized multimedia for more than a decade. Thanks to the recent development of new software tools for the production of DAISY multimedia, today everyone can have access to information in a way that best suits their personal learning style. (source: http://www.daisy.org/education) 3.2 U.S. National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard and DAISY The National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS) is a technical standard used to produce source files in XML format that may be used to develop multiple specialized outputs in a variety of formats for students with print disabilities. The XML and image source files of a NIMAS file set can be used to create Braille, large print, HTML, DAISY digital talking books (DTBs) using human voice audio or text-to-speech synthetic audio, and more. (The NIMAS applies to instructional materials published [available for purchase or in print] on or after 7/19/06.) The NIMAS is a sub-set of the DAISY Standard. DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information SYstem and refers to an international standard for creating a variety of DTBs: digital books that are a combination of synchronized text and audio. The DAISY specification is made up of internationally agreed-upon rules and requirements necessary to create digital and audio books, including XML and SMIL file requirements and structural and other aspects. (Source: “DAISY and NIMAS in HTML, A Guide to Accessible HTML Production for DAISY 3 and NIMAS 1.1, April 2011, Prepared by Valerie Hendricks. http://aim.cast.org/learn/practice/production/daisy_nimas_html) 3.3 DAISY Users response 3.3.1 National Achievement Award winner John Russo (US) "…Now, the DAISY player has an added feature of allowing you to set marks at various points within the text, and you can compare that to highlighting. So if there’s information that I’m hearing and consider important, and might want to refer back to it at a later time, I can insert a mark ? and we can place an endless number of marks in multiple books on these players. So this allows us to relocate that information immediately. The DAISY players also allow you to go from page to page, similar as a sighted person flips the pages. Or it allows us to just go chapter by chapter. These navigation features enable us to function as though we do have eyes. And because the book is in the palm of our hand, we have it and use it any time we need it. This is independence: we don’t have to rely on anybody to get our studying done." (source: http://www.learningally.org/Blog/Access-and-Achievement/144/vobId__830/) 3.3.2 Sir Steve Redgrave CBE, MBE (UK) “I believe in reading. The evidence supporting the synthetic phonics teaching method is highly compelling. It would be great if every child in this country had an advanced reading age, well at least a reading age as high as their actual age. In fact if they had I wouldn't really need to be standing on this soap box. Unfortunately that is literacy utopia and is some distance from the truth. We have a literacy problem in the UK that affects about 20% of the population. Much of this statistic is underpinned by people with dyslexia who have long term, fundamental difficulties with printed text. I'm one of them.” “Despite the extraordinary numbers of dyslexic readers, I sometimes feel also there is an assumption amongst educationalists that there is only one way to learn, i.e. through the medium of reading. More research needs to be done to explore alternative methods such as video, but I've seen research from America, which shows that if students with literacy problems are exposed to learning materials in the form of combined audio and text, their exam scores can increase by almost 40%. This is staggering and it's time everyone knew about it. We're in a digital age; it's now possible to create digital books that could be presented for example as combined audio and text. This type of book called DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) is proving highly popular with everyone that uses it, including the lucky few that have access to it in the UK. In fact in two trials, one in the UK and one in Ireland, where children with special print needs have had access to digital audio and text, the other kids in the class argued to have it as well…” (source: http://www.altformat.org/index.asp?pid=319) 3.3.3 Mai-Linn Holdt, Youth Representative, Dyslexia Norway “My parents had already noticed my language difficulties when I was in the kindergarten. They frequently discussed their worries with the teachers during my first years at school. The answer was that this was quite normal and they "need not worry, some children just need more time". It was only after they insisted on an evaluation by the municipal training specialist, that dyslexia was diagnosed. All of my homework involved my parents just as much as it involved me. They spent hours reading my books aloud and helping out with my writing. In the 5th grade they discovered that most of my books were available in the DAISY format. This was a service originally set up for people who are blind, but later it was also made available to pupils with dyslexia. As the school had to pay a substantial fee to buy the additional book format, it took some effort and time to get all the DAISY books I needed. However, getting the DAISY books wasn't yet heaven after all. The books had to be played on a PC with software that didn't always work. The next two years were a frustrating struggle with books or a PC that did not work properly. The hopes I had of doing my own homework started to break down. My parents still spent hours with me getting through the lessons and my self-esteem was dropping. With properly made DAISY books and a new DAISY player, things started to work. However, I still wanted my parents to read the books and to guide me in all sorts of homework. I had grown addicted to all their help and I just didn't want to stand on my own feet again. Finally, they decided not to read for me anymore, which forced me to start reading my DAISY books to find the answers to the homework questions. I was still keen to please my teacher with well done work and slowly realised that I had to take responsibility for my own schoolwork…” (source: http://www.daisy.org/stories/mai-linn-holdt) 4. DAISY in Disaster Risk Reduction 4.1 Lessons learned from the North East Japan Disaster On 11th March 2011, in a few hours we lost more than 20,000 lives and 500,000 houses by Magnitude 9 earthquake and gigantic Tsunami. 56% of the victims who lost their lives on 3.11 were over 65 years old. The death ratio among those who were older than 65 years was double the average. The death ratio among those who were registered person with a disability was reported to be twice the average or higher. This means that we must strive to secure lives of old people and persons with disabilities in particular to reduce the loss of lives when disasters strike. One of the most important lessons we learned from the North East Japan Earthquake Disasters regarding ICT accessibility is the fact that lack of accessible alert and, more importantly, lack of appropriate preparedness including knowledge to protect lives of those vulnerable populations. The interval between largest quakes and Tsunami was more than 30 minutes in all Tsunami hit zone. If everybody correctly understood the potential risk of Tsunami and made decision to evacuate immediately, the situation in terms of mass human casualty could be completely different. We had very few good practices that saved lives in the Tsunami hit zone and many worst cases too. Good practices were only achieved by learning from lessons of previous disasters. Most of the successful disaster learning process were supported by effective audio-visual presentations to make it realistic followed by evacuation drills. 4.2 Miracle in Kamaishi City The City of Kamaishi lost 1,000 lives out of 39,000 residents by Tsunami on 11th March 2011. Reportedly, 5 students were killed but 2,921 students of elementary and junior high schools in Kamaishi survived. All students at schools were safe. Many students at home alone or with grand parents or with younger brothers and sisters successfully evacuated with those family members even though some of grand parents were reluctant to evacuate based on their experiences and expectations. The school system in Kamaishi City has been preparing for Tsunami evacuation even though the City was protected by one of the best and expensive seawall, costed 1.5 billion US dollars. A research says that the seawall was completely broken by the 3.11 Tsunami but it delayed the Tsunami attack to residential areas for 6 minutes and cut down the highest reach of Tsunami from 13 m to 9 m from the standard sea level. The students were well trained to make decision to evacuate immediately after a big quake without waiting for an instruction from adults. They were well informed that even 50 cm Tsunami may wash away people and cars through video and other instructional materials. Based on that knowledge and evacuation drills, almost all students could make a decision to evacuate with family members and successfully persuaded them to evacuate with them. In addition, students were taught 3 key points: * Be prepared for a hazard more than expectation. * Do the best for survival. * Be brave to be the first to evacuate. 4.3 Tragedy of Ookawa Elementary School Ookawa Elementary School is located 5 km from the nearest sea. The School was designated to a shelter for disasters including earthquake and Tsunami. On 3.11, the School lost 74 students out of 108 and 10 teachers out of 13. A school bus driver was killed too. There was about 50 minutes from the largest quake to the attack of Tsunami. The question was why they did not evacuate to higher place and stay. Firstly, due to black out caused by the quake, the school was not informed of the gigantic Tsunami. The first warning was for 3 m Tsunami, and immediately after the first warning was broadcasted, all TV units in the Tsunami hit areas did not work by black out. Car radio and other radios, twitter and other internet based information was reached to the battery operation devices in Tsunami hit area. However, none of those information channel could save those victims in Ookawa Elementary School. Investigation on this tragedy is still going on but it is clear that if the school and the students are well prepared for Tsunami, none of the victims were killed because there was enough time to evacuate if they decided to do so. 4.4 Showcase evacuation of persons with psycho-social disabilities in Urakawa On 11th March 2011, the Mayor of the Urakawa Town issued evacuation order. Bethel’s House members, 150 people with psycho-social disabilities, conducted a showcase evacuation to the designated shelter by themselves and helped evacuation of at least one old lady with mobility disability as long as I have confirmed. The 2.8 meters Tsunami hit Urakawa pulled tens of cars to the sea and severely destroyed fisherman’s area. The amount of damage in Urakawa Town is estimated 3.75 million US dollars but there was no human casualties. Through the experiences of regular Tsunami evacuation drills and 3.11 Tsunami, members of Bethel’s House have more confidence on Tsunami preparedness development by themselves and look for wider collaboration to reach out to those who require support to develop their own evacuation plan in collaboration with the Town Administration, local autonomous groups, local disability organizations, National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities Research Institute, other researchers and DAISY professionals. 4.5 DAISY in Urakawa Members of Urakawa Bethel’s House are living in the community in Urakawa. They have been conducting regular Tsunami evacuation training 4 times per year, summer and winter, and daytime as well as evening in each season at each group home. Most of the group home they live are built on the ground of 4 meters above the average sea level. Expected highest Tsunami is more than 10 meters high. The sea in front of Urakawa is the most frequent earthquake zone in Japan. After a research on ICT for disaster preparedness of persons with disabilities, I came to a conclusion in 2003 that on-site collaborative research with a group of persons who are most segregated thus most vulnerable in the community is crucial to reduce loss of lives in disasters and found that requirements of people with psycho-social disabilities and people with autism disorders spectrum for ICT accessibility were almost unknown at that time. In 2004, I received a new government research grant to develop an accessible multimedia standard which addresses the requirements of persons with psycho-social and/or cognitive disabilities. Disaster preparedness was chosen to prove the outcome of the project based on the urgent needs of beneficiaries and clear measure of the performance of the outcome, i.e. if the outcome is good enough the beneficiaries becomes more safe when disasters strike them. What the research team learned from partners with psycho-social disabilities in Urakawa reflected to a pilot Tsunami evacuation manual in DAISY multimedia format. The requirements for the evacuation manual included to attract and keep attention for several minutes, to explain the scientific knowledge on cause and danger of Tsunami clearly, to show the best evacuation route with clear imagination, and to clearly indicate measurable success criteria, &c. The research team created an original multimedia Tsunami evacuation manual for Bethel’s House based on Power Card or Social Story concept developed by US autism community. Records of earthquakes and tsunami in Urakawa area was reviewed and reflected to the success criteria of evacuation, reaching at least 10 meters above the average sea level within 4 minutes after the earthquake. Regarding to attraction of attention, I selected characters of best popular Manga author, Mr. Takashi Yanase, who allowed us to make use of his special characters such as Tsunami-man. Digital picture of rooms, stairs, doors, roads and landmarks of evacuation route were used in combination with maps to give clear image of the best evacuation route which will guarantee the successful evacuation. The text of each page of evacuation manual is short and straight to the point. Each text is narrated by human voice with text highlight. The evacuation drill at Bethel’s House always begins with presentation of the DAISY Multimedia evacuation manual. As we believe that ownership of the manual is the key to maintenance of the manual, we transferred the DAISY authoring technology to Bethel’s House members to create and modify manuals. In addition, we introduced the concept of Video Self-Modeling to the manual; after a successful evacuation drill, we replaced some of the digital pictures with the pictures that were taken during the successful evacuation drill so that residents of a group home may see themselves conducting a showcase evacuation again and again. 4.6 Consideration on Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) 4.6.1 Active participation of persons with disabilities in development of individual evacuation plan Tsunami alert in the right format should be reached in time to trigger right decision making of people for evacuation assuming that people have appropriate evacuation plan. The evacuation plan should be practical and should be confirmed to work by evacuation drills before disasters strike. The best measure to evaluate the performance of evacuation plan for individuals is actual participation in the evacuation drill. If the plan does not work, each individual should be encouraged to give detailed feed back to the planning body and should be invited to give input to develop an appropriate plan for her or him. Guaranteeing access to information and knowledge on DRR is crucial to support this active role of individuals in particular those with disabilities. Accessible ICT standards must address the accessibility requirements to share information and knowledge on DRR for individuals with disabilities so that they may study and develop individual evacuation scenario to save their own lives. Accessibility standards and guidelines development for motion pictures and publications including geographical information as well as distribution of those accessible DRR contents are urged to all stakeholders including mainstream standard development organizations and DRR concerned organizations. Zero loss of human lives at Tsunami is theoretically achievable if we successfully implement the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in DRR arena. The question is “Are we developing accessible and easy to understand DRR contents that should be shared by everybody including persons with all types of disabilities and other vulnerable people?” My answer to this question is unfortunately “No!” at the moment. We need to develop a global strategy of all stakeholders to change the situation and implement CRPD in DRR arena. Assuming that an earthquake strikes an area of your living or traveling, and a gigantic Tsunami similar to 3.11 is expected to hit you in half an hour, I may say that everybody including those travellers may survive if the community has developed appropriate evacuation plans for each individual with active participation of all residents including those with disabilities. 4.6.2 Role of accessible ICT standards in DRR The role of accessible ICT standards to implement CRPD in DRR arena is crucial. The best use of human knowledge to guarantee security and safety of everybody including persons with disabilities requires significant change of knowledge sharing process of the society. For example, hazard maps and evacuation manuals need to be understood by everybody including those who are with deafblind, blind and low vision. Sign language users, those with minority languages in the community, and foreign citizens may have difficulty to read and understand textual contents of publications for evacuation information. Persons with psycho-social disabilities, persons with autism spectrum disorders, and persons with intellectual disabilities may require simple and easy to understand contents to avoid confusions. Archives on Disasters including documentary videos and news programs need to be accessible for everybody who must learn from previous tragedies as well as good practices. In addition, development of accessible and easy to understand scientific knowledge base on DRR will play key roles to share solutions to break down the barriers that prevent those who are vulnerable to evacuate in time. Accessible ICT will create a community which is well prepared for disasters by mobilizing human capacity through sharing of appropriate DRR knowledge on the cloud as well as at telecenters, community radio stations and small mobile libraries in laptops or mobile phones. By sharing local disaster preparedness information through accessible DRR knowledge networks, travelers may have access to crucial safety information in time. Inclusion of all types of vulnerable people from the design stage is essential to the strategy development not only because of humanitarian aspects but also because of economic aspects of the sustainable development of the accessible global DRR knowledge base. 5. DAISY initiatives to implement CRPD including inclusive DRR In 2003 and 2005 during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), on behalf of the DAISY Consortium, I had the honor to serve as the Civil Society Disability Focal Point and coordinated the Global Forum on Disability in the Information Society (http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/prompt/cdppd/newprogram.html) in Geneva and Tunis respectively as one of multi-stakeholder Summit Events in collaboration with the International Disability Alliance and the W3C. The Session on Disaster Preparedness of Persons with Disabilities at the Forum held in Tunis in 2005 highlighted the role of ICT to develop preparedness for disasters. This session was followed-up in Phuket, Thailand, by international conferences on disaster preparedness of persons with disabilities in 2007 (http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/prompt/wsisindex.html) and 2009 (http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/prompt/ws070111.html). The National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities (NRCD) Research Institute, SMIL/W3C Working Group and the DAISY Consortium met in Tokyo in May 2005 to discuss SMIL revision and further development of accessible multimedia to meet the requirements of all types of persons with disabilities and wider community. Most of the participants of the Tokyo meeting moved to Urakawa in Hokkaido to meet and discuss with residents of the most frequent earthquake zone including members of Urakawa Bethel’s House. ICT Use cases learned from residents with severe psycho-social disabilities in Urakawa, where the earliest tsunami in the record came 4 minutes after the earthquake, indicated a set of requirements for their tsunami evacuation manual. A multimedia evacuation manual in DAISY format which met the most of their requirements was developed by the joint support of NRCD Research Institute and US researchers group on autism. The DAISY Consortium has been developing Urakawa toolkit as a result of the 2005 meeting in Urakawa (http://www.daisy.org/project/urakawa). Core DAISY standard development staffs of DAISY4 (ANSI/NISO Z39.98-2012) (http://daisy.niso.org/standards/z39-98-2012.html) and EPUB3 (http://idpf.org/epub/30) including George Kerscher, Secretary General of the DAISY Consortium and the President of the IDPF, as well as Markus Gylling, Chief Technical Officer of both DAISY Consortium and IDPF, are participants of the meeting in Urakawa and keep the spirit shared by the meeting till now. The DAISY Profile of SMIL 3.0 (http://www.w3.org/TR/SMIL/) became official W3C recommendation in December 2008 and now adopted by EPUB3 as the Media Overlay. I am convinced that combination of the Authoring and Interchange Framework for Adaptive XML Publishing Specification known as DAISY4 and the industry standard ebook distribution format known as EPUB3 is the best ground for inclusive DRR contents format which meets the requirements captured in Urakawa in 2005 including synchronization of text and video or sign languages. Since DAISY4 identifies EPUB3 as the standard distribution packaging format, EPUB3 contents may have the best accessibility that has been developed by DAISY. 6. Whole Community DRR could be a best empowering avenue for inclusion 6.1 Recommendation of the EGM in Tokyo The report (http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/egm2012/final-report.pdf) of the United Nations Expert Meeting on Building Inclusive Societies and Development through Promotion of Accessible Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs); Emerging issues and trends Tokyo, Japan 19 ? 21 April 2012, gives a comprehensive overview on the key role of the accessible ICT. The meeting paid special attention on the role of accessible ICT in inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction. Key recommendations for all stakeholders concerned with “Disaster preparedness at community and individual levels” are as follows: a) To define accessible ICTs standards for the full range of ICTs employed in disaster preparedness, response and recovery processes, which shall include integrated public alert systems, accessible digital radio, television broadcasts, and related communication services. b) To define and acquire low power or alternative power ICTs that can be used when power outages occur, for instance crank radios to receive emergency warnings, and mobile ICTs devices that work in extreme weather conditions, for instance waterproof mobile telephones that can be charged from a crank radios and similar device. c) To develop and promote standards for accessible, plain-language content for use in ICTs goods and services. d) To commit to development and provision of outreach and training in accessible ICTs, which can include, but not be limited to, training of trainers, planning training content development, and training delivery mechanisms that planners, emergency management teams, local communities and individuals can use prior to, throughout and during recovery from a disaster or an emergency situation. As one of the participants of this extremely important meeting and the moderator of the Special Session on “Towards disability-responsive and inclusive disasters and emergency response and management”, I totally agree on those key recommendations and I would like to add another key factor to motivate persons with disabilities to take part in the development of inclusive DRR at community level, where often people with disabilities are looked down and not considered to be important assets for inclusive DRR. Changing mindset of people including persons with disabilities is the most difficult task in the real world at the moment. Therefore we must look into the achievements and good practices in active participation of persons with disabilities in community based DRR development and encourage and support networking of those interested stakeholders at all levels. 6.2 A showcase development in Urakawa Ms. Satoko Akiyama and Ms. Shoko Katogi, member-staffs of Bethel's House, gave following introduction to their presentation on “Disaster Preparedness for Persons with Mental Disabilities Project by Bethels House” at the 2nd International Conference on Disaster Preparedness for Persons with Disabilities, 12 ? 13 May, 2009, Phuket. “Bethels House is a self-help group for/of users and survivors of psychiatry in Urakawa, Hokkaido, northern part of Japan. Active members of Bethel’s House are more than 100 persons with schizophrenia, depression, addiction of alcoholic and/or drugs. Urakawa has been suffered from 11 strong earthquakes in the past 60 years. In 2003, many Bethel's members did not escape to shelters, but devastated at our group home. It is said that people with disabilities must be more difficult to survive at disasters, especially for the people with mental disabilities. Bethel’s House members have been struggling for disaster preparedness in cooperation with the National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disability and the Town Administration since 2003. Based on the Japanese government’s official data, we drafted the evacuation scenario with the goal of “Reaching to the 10 meter high within four minutes after the quake”. We are conducting evacuation trainings at our 3 vocational workshops and 7 group homes. Each workshop and group home has its own evacuation manual which we made in DAISY format. We conducted the Tsunami preparedness project on the stance that it is ok to do the evacuation drill even though we still have some questions. Through this project, many members understood how to evacuate to the safe shelter and actually go there when strong earthquakes happen. This winter, members have conducted the evacuation drill by themselves. This report presents the Tsunami disaster preparedness development project being conducted by people with mental disabilities in Japan.” The international participants were extremely moved and encouraged by the presentation which illustrates broad potential of persons with disabilities in disaster preparedness. The Conference adopted the Phuket declaration on Disaster Preparedness for Persons with Disabilities (http://www.dinf.ne.jp/doc/english/prompt/cdppd/090512_1.html). After the Conference, Urakawa was hit by Tsunami 3 times. In February 2010, a Tsunami came all the way from the West Coast of Chile. Bethel’s House Members showed model evacuation even though there was no significant damage in Urakawa. On 11th March 2012, Urakawa Town with 13,000 residents was hit by 2.8 meters of Tsunami and lost some 4 million US Dollars economic value but very fortunately there was no human casualty. Bethel’s House members successfully evacuated just like regular evacuation drills. Many residents did not have evacuation scenario when the Mayor ordered evacuation, Today, neighbors of the Bethel’s House members well recognize their knowledge on Tsunami evacuation and confidence to follow the best safe scenario. It is important to keep this confidence and fight against forgetfulness. People with disabilities need to be encouraged to be always well prepared because of their vulnerability but once they are well convinced with appropriate support including accessible ICT, they become the best asset of the community as a whole when it comes to development of individual scenario of DRR in the community because of their experience and knowledge to cope with special requirements. 7. Conclusions Most of the victims of 3.11 disasters were immediately killed by Tsunami when it struck them. Massive rescue operation could save lives of relatively few people compared with the number of victims. Neighbors in the community had the most important role to help each other for evacuation and rescue from Tsunami. The lesson learned from 3.11 tells us to be well prepared for Tsunami evacuation within 30 minutes at the latest. Since none of the rescue team may come to help evacuation within 30 minutes, everybody including persons with disabilities need to have individual evacuation scenario for survival. When it comes to evacuation, we must mobilize human resources available at community to help those who require support to move such as people with motor disabilities, who are blind or low vision, who are with Parkinson disease, who are shocked by the incidents, who do not know where to evacuate, &c. Persons with disabilities normally require more effort to develop individual evacuation plan and require more time, effort and support to evacuate. However, the practice of Bethel’s House opened our eyes to find the fact that a group of people with severe psycho-social disabilities may become a champion of Tsunami evacuation in the community. Everybody has anxieties on disasters. Access to scientific knowledge in the right format, accessible and easy to understand, may help to understand the risk of disasters. Sharing anxiety and solutions in the community we live before disasters strike is essential to secure safety of everybody including persons with disabilities. Inclusive DRR is a strategy to promote this essential process at all levels including individuals, families, schools, companies, communities, villages and cities, prefectures and states, countries, and international organizations. The role of accessible ICT including DAISY, EPUB and NVDA is crucial to realize Inclusive DRR. I would like to conclude this note by citation of the Phuket declaration of the 2nd International Conference on Disaster Preparedness for Persons with Disabilities, assembled in May 2009 in Phuket, Thailand: 1) Recognize the needs for ongoing efforts to achieve disability-inclusive disaster preparedness by all means including through knowledge-based solutions, combining the strength of standard-based accessible ICTs and traditional/local knowledge and through full and effective participation of persons with diverse types of disabilities; 2) Reaffirm the spirit of the Phuket Declaration on Tsunami Preparedness for Persons with Disabilities, especially with regard to full implementation of the Biwako Millennium Framework (BMF), World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), Tampere Convention and other relevant instruments; 3) Strongly committed to foster networking and partnership environment among disability sector, ICT sector, disaster preparedness/management sector and international development sector while reaching out for greater collaboration with other sectors, including policy makers, local governments and local communities, researchers and other relevant interested parties to turn the spirit, principles and demands for disability-inclusive disaster preparedness into reality. Thank you very much for your attention.