The DAISY Consortium — Digital Accessible Information System — is a worldwide not-for-profit standards organization made up of libraries and ICT companies in more than 40 countries. Members of the consortium (www.daisy.org) share its vision and mission.

Vision: The DAISY Consortium envisions a world where people with print disabilities have equal access to information and knowledge, without delay or additional expense.

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.

The DAISY Standards are open, non-proprietary standards known as ANSI/NISO Z39.86-2005, based on widely accepted existing open standards such as those from W3C. DAISY publications are made up of synchronized text, graphics and audio that provide a rich, accessible multimedia reading experience to readers with disabilities.

Periodic reviews of the Standard ensure that it continues to meet the needs of disability communities and those who serve them. The ongoing development and promotion of the DAISY Standards support equal access to information and knowledge.

Although DAISY was originally developed to support the reading needs of individuals who are blind or have a visual disability, its use has expanded to benefit individuals with cognitive disabilities such as dyslexia, those with intellectual disabilities, individuals with physical disabilities such as those caused by Parkinson’s disease, those who are deaf or hard of hearing, and others who are unable to read standard publications. The DAISY Standard also applies to areas such as oral language preservation for the retention of indigenous languages without a written script, language learning and literacy training. The structured navigation which DAISY books provide can meet all of these reading and information needs.

Persons with disabilities in developing countries have neither the information they require to participate fully in their communities nor the resources to gain the knowledge they require to do so. DAISY can bring accessible information to people in developing countries, bridging the digital divide and the information gap.

The DAISY Consortium acted as the Civil Society Disability Focal Point during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and facilitated the Global Forum on Disability in the Information Society during the Geneva and Tunis phases of WSIS. The Consortium actively supports the implementation of the WSIS Plan of Action and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.