DAISY Consortium Presents 2008 Culture of Sharing Award to Stephen King, Group Director - RNIB, UK

Amsterdam, Netherlands and London, UK (PRWEB) November 11, 2008

The DAISY Consortium presented its highest honor, the Culture of Sharing Award, for 2008 to Stephen King, Group Director Access and Innovation at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), UK. King was unanimously selected for the award by the DAISY Consortium Board of Directors in recognition of his long-term, visionary leadership in support of the Consortium's mission 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 Award was presented by Hiroshi Kawamura, President of the DAISY Consortium, at the Adaptive Content Processing Conference 2008 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

About Stephen King

Stephen King leads RNIB's people working to improve access to information, technology, environment and culture, and to provide core access services to blind and partially sighted people and to businesses and organizations who want to improve access to their services. King joined RNIB in 1990 as Director of Technical and Consumer Services (TCS). He has an MBA from the Scottish Business School at Glasgow University and is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.

King was one of the six founding members of the DAISY Consortium in 1996 and continues to serve on the Consortium's Board of Directors. He has led or sponsored many key projects with the DAISY Consortium and RNIB including:

-RNIB's support and role in the development of the DAISY Pipeline, the Consortium's open source, multifaceted transformation software which is in use worldwide;

-RNIB's support and role in the development of a standard protocol for the online delivery of DAISY books and other DAISY content;

-RNIB's support and role in the development of Tobi, the Consortium's open source "DAISY 3" master production software;

-international copyright reform, which led to new proposals in 2004 from the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO);

-modernization of RNIB's Talking Book Service to deliver a better way to read for its members;

-development of the original EBU (European Blind Union) User Requirements for digital talking books in 1996;

-RNIB's fully DAISY-compliant digital service which now delivers over 100,000 listening hours of accessible information every day;

-accessible currency design including work with EBU to ensure Euro notes and coins were designed for inclusion;

-audio description which is now a requirement for all UK broadcasters;

-launch of RNIB's web site in 1994.

Stephen King has an exceptional, ongoing commitment to the DAISY Consortium, the DAISY Standards, and bringing DAISY books to all people everywhere.

About the Culture of Sharing Award

The highest honor conferred by the the DAISY Consortium, the Culture of Sharing Award recognizes an outstanding individual or organization that exemplifies outstanding qualities of leadership, the meaning of sharing, and the ethics of service, social awareness and collaboration.

The DAISY Consortium has selected an Inukshuk sculpture as a symbol of the Culture of Sharing Award. The Inukshuk, pronounced IN-OOK-SHOOK, meaning "likeness of a person", are magnificent lifelike figures of stone erected by the Inuit people along the most northern shores of the Canadian Arctic. The Inuit make inuksuit in different forms and for different purposes: to show directions to travelers, to warn of impending danger, to mark a place of respect, or to act as helpers in the hunting of caribou. Enduring symbols of leadership, Inukshuk encourage us to remember the importance of friendship and of our dependence upon one another to achieve what one person alone could not possibly achieve.

About the DAISY Consortium

The DAISY Standard (officially ANSI/NISO z39.86 Specifications for the Digital Talking Book) has revolutionized the reading experience for people with print disabilities around the globe. DAISY, the Digital Accessible Information SYstem, is the world's most widely used assistive technology for reading. Formed in 1996 by like-minded organizations around the world, today the DAISY Consortium consists of nearly 70 non-profit organizations representing 35 different countries and more than 20 for-profit companies which provide products and services to meet the needs of the DAISY community. These organizations are working together 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. More information about the DAISY Consortium and the DAISY Standard is available at http://www.daisy.org.

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