Program Friday
All times are CET.
Location: Store auditorium
Åse Wetås, National Librarian, Wilfred Østgulen, Director of IT and Øyvind Engh, Acting Deputy National Librarian, The National Library of Norway
Twenty years after The National Library began mass‑digitizing Norway’s cultural heritage, this digital collection now forms the foundation for an ambitious national push into artificial intelligence.
Øyvind Engh will walk us through the history of The National Library’s AI initiative in a talk with Åse Wetås and Wilfred Østgulen.
The session will include an introduction to AI4LAM — Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives, and Museums — where the National Library has played a key role in establishing and formalizing an international network of 1,500 members.
Location:
10:00–10:15 Current State of Publishing Standards and Plans for Future Enhancements
Avneesh Singh, Chief Operation Officer, DAISY Consortium (India)
Mr. Singh will present an overview of the current status of the EPUB family of specifications and discuss the enhancements planned for upcoming revisions.
10:15–10:45 Comics for People with Reading Difficulties
Morten Sjøgren, Developer, Det Kongelige Biblioteks Nota-service (Denmark)
About the development of the comic book format used in the Nota-service through the last 15 years. The technical difficulties encountered along the way and what the future could look like for accessible comics.
10:45–11:15 Comics and Formats
Hadrien Gardeur, Lead of the Media Overlays Task Force in addition to the Digital Comics Task Force at W3C and Deputy Director, EDRLab (France)
EDRLab will present on-going work on the EPUB 3.4 revision, including changes related to comics and Media Overlays. The presentation will also cover how EPUB can evolve to support accessible comics using textual and auditory alternatives to visual content.
11:15–11:45 How to Make Comics Accessible?
Basile Mignonneau, Head of the Production Department, Association Valentin Haüy and Christophe Rigaud, AI Research Scientist, La Rochelle University (France)
The Manga Comics Project is developing a methodology for analyzing the images and text of comic albums to provide an immersive narrative experience for visually impaired individuals. The goal is to enhance accessibility of comic books and mangas.
11:45–12:00 Break
12:00–12:30 Discussion on comics
Location:
10:00–10:30 LINEAR: The LLM that transforms editorial content into structured data to feed the Dorina Foundation’s Digital Ecosystem
Rafael Martins, Data Protection Officer, and Alexandre Munck, Chief Executive Officer, Fundação Dorina Nowill para Cegos (Brazil)
LINEAR is designed to transform full editorial content into structured, clean, and semantically meaningful information. Dorina uses LINEAR as a strategic intelligence layer that feeds the Dorina Foundation’s digital ecosystem with content that is already structured and ready for use. This creates an efficient, scalable, and accessible workflow.
10:30–11:00 Using AI in PDF to Reflowable Production
Ayan Kishore, Chief Executive Officer, Benetech (USA)
Benetech will present a technology they have developed using AI to convert PDF to reflowable formats.
11:00–11:30 PDF Conversion Put to the Test: What Works for Accessible Publishing?
Richard Orme, Chief Executive Officer, DAISY Consortium
The DAISY AI Special Interest Group has benchmarked PDF conversion services against a community-developed quality framework designed specifically for accessible publishing. We present the results, and invite attendees to engage with the methodology, challenge our findings, and consider joining the working group.
11:30-11:45 Break
11:45–12:05 Building a “Lovable” for Content Conversion: Predictable AI, Controlled Costs, and High Quality — Every Time
Fredrik Schill, Chief Technology Officer, and Jens Halvarsson, Chief Executive Officer, Textalk (Sweden)
AI is now an obvious part of content conversion. The real challenge is no longer whether AI can help, but how to make it predictable, cost-effective, and trustworthy in production over time. Textalk will show their production infrastructure that combines deterministic systems and AI to transform books, newspapers and magazines effectively into structured, validated, and accessible output.
12:05-12:25 MONET — End-Product-Agnostic Production of Accessible Content
Edmar Schut, Technology Architect, Dedicon (the Netherlands)
Users expect greater choice and reading flexibility in accessible information, whereas traditional production is typically designed around a single end product. Dedicon is developing a more flexible and scalable production process where multiple reading formats are automatically generated from a single structured, canonical source. At its core is the MONET framework. We explain how MONET works, the value it delivers, and the opportunities it creates.
12:25–12:30 Summary/Q&A
Location: Salongen
Dominic Labbé, Technical Leader, HumanWare, (Canada), will lead the discussion together with Avneesh Singh, Chief Operation Officer, DAISY Consortium (India)
The DAISY Technical Strategies Forum has worked with the community and compiled the requirements for the next-generation protocol for delivering accessible content. A part of the process has been to evaluate the existing protocol OPDS and DODP v1 and v2, and how they meet the requirements set forth by the community. In this session we will discuss the following topics:
- Is there a need for a next-generation protocol, which would compel the organizations to invest on creating/upgrading their systems?
- The requirements document, discussions on constraints and potential candidates
- Next steps
We are looking forward to a good discussion where we can learn more about the community’s needs and thoughts and work out the plan ahead.
The requirements can be found at: https://github.com/daisy/technical-strategies/wiki/Requirements-of-online-delivery-protocol
Location: Folkestova
Visit the exhibition to see products and discuss various solutions.
Location: Canteen
Location: Store auditorium
Title coming
Location: Store auditorium
Maarten Verboom, DAISY Chairman of the Board and Director at Dedicon (the Netherlands), will summarize the conference together with host Øyvind Engh.