Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

'The U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimated earlier this year that about 3 million veterans, or 14 percent of the total veteran population, had a service-connected disability. For veterans with visual impairments, traumatic brain injuries or other disabilities, reading standard print is difficult, if not impossible. For them, Bookshare —Benetech’s Global Literacy initiative and the world’s largest accessible digital library for people with print disabilities—opens up

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 19, 2013

'Benetech, my nonprofit organization operates Bookshare, the largest online library dedicated to serving blind and print disabled people. We have 197,000 books available in the United States today, and serve 250,000 people , mainly in the United States, but also in 40 other countries. Our library is made possible both by a domestic copyright exception that makes it possible for us to add any book requested by a blind person to our library, as well as strong cooperation with publishers who provid

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 3, 2013

'Guest Beneblog by Betsy Beaumon, VP and General Manager, Benetech’s Global Literacy Program. Betsy Beaumon I recently had the honor to speak at the first-ever Braille Summit , hosted on June 19-21, 2013 by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) and Perkins School for the Blind. With the goal of promoting braille literacy, this landmark meeting brought together braille experts from around the world to Perkins’ campus in Watertown, Massachusetts.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 11, 2013

'This post originally appeared on CSRwire Talkback. The staff at Benetech , the nonprofit tech company I lead, recently came together to answer this question: “What values define our identity and drive our work?” It was a very meaningful exercise for our entire team, resulting in what we call “ The Seven Benetech Truths.” Among them are truths like “We Get Stuff Done” and “Value Flexibility” — highlighting that we focus intensely on results and upholding our commitments, while also being flexibl

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 6, 2013

'Imagine someone offered you $1 to leave the house an hour earlier in the morning so as to shift your commute to an off-peak train. Will you do it? If you’re like most people, you will say no. Now imagine you’d be offered a 1-in-100 chance of winning $100. You might find this offer much more enticing. You may even end up gladly altering your commuting habit.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 7, 2013

'The Obama Administration is turning its back on people with disabilities--and I''m outraged. I''m an engineer and social entrepreneur, trying to make the world a better place for people with disabilities, and I rarely step into the role of vocal advocate. But when you see behavior that is so unjust, you just have to speak out against it. Here is what is happening.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 10, 2013

'This post originally appeared as part of an online debate about How Big Data Can Have a Social Impact, which the Harvard Business Review Blog Network hosted jointly with the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Right now I''m in Oxford, England, for the annual Skoll World Forum! Big Data is all the rage in Silicon Valley. From Facebook to Netflix, companies are tracking and analyzing our searches, our purchases, and just about every other online activity that will give them more insigh

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

Plenary Talk at the Eighth General Assembly of the World Blind Union Access to published information is an essential requirement for education, employment and full social inclusion. People with vision impairments and other print disabilities deserve equal access to that treasure of information. These are exciting times for everyone who’s been working to meet the accessibility imperative, as we are witnessing global movements that will increase accessible publishing and create new and better oppo

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Accessibility Global eBook Copyright 155

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 7, 2013

Bookshare International Library We’re always thinking about new ways in which Benetech could go deeper and help many more people. While we’re extremely proud of our achievements in the field of accessibility and disability rights, we know that we’ve just scratched the surface of what we could possibly do to bolster parity of access to information by people with disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

It’s a terrific experience to spend a weekend hacking for social good. Knowing that you’re working with literally thousands of others worldwide makes it simply awe-inspiring. That’s why we love Random Hacks of Kindness Global: 2 days + 30 countries + 3000 geeks working on making the world a better, safer place. Its mission is strongly aligned with our own at our SocialCoding4Good project: build awareness of technology serving humanity, engage technical volunteers to contribute their time and tal

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 9, 2012

Every week our Bookshare team hears from our Members. I am thrilled to get copied on these emails: it reminds me of why we do here at Benetech! I appreciate that so many of our Members take the time to write and thank our team. Changes often inspire Members to write and it is so helpful to hear about what works (and what doesn't work so we can fix it).

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 18, 2012

Scientist / Data Analysis Engineer / General Techie Want to help save the world with your code? Like going to hackathons and wish you could get paid to work on a good cause full time? Want to help assemble evidence used to convict dictors of war crimes? We're Benetech's Human Rights Data Analysis Group, and we're hiring right now ! What we do: Benetech's Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) develops database software, data collection strategies, and statistical techniques to measure human ri

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Analysis Statistics Chart Language 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 10, 2011

T, December 10th, the international community is observing Human Rights Day to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since its adoption at the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, the Declaration has become a universal standard for the promotion and protection of human rights worldwide. On International Human Rights Day, we pay tribute to all human rights defenders, celebrate the recent victories of the human rights community, and reco

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 8, 2011

President’s Update Fall 2011 Don’t be surprised, but we’re picking up the pace of change at Benetech! The world’s problems are many, and we keep seeing opportunities for technologists to address those problems effectively. Our team has been thinking hard about scaling positive social impact of technology work. I want to unveil several of these new initiatives, as well as sneaking in some of the incredible things happening in our core programs in literacy and human rights.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

We’ve been exploring the area of sustainability a great deal lately. We have some new ideas for software Benetech could be developing. But, one of our core values is to see what’s already out there and to not duplicate great work already being done. That means we frequently run into cool projects (and mentally check the box: taken care of!). In this exploration effort, thanks to John Danner, the incredibly connected entrepreneur who hangs his hat occasionally at the Haas Business School in Berke

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 31, 2011

I'm very excited to be a guest editor with the awesome Donna McNear on next year's special technology issue of the Journal of Vision Impairment and Blindness. JVIB is the peer-reviewed journal of record in the field of vision loss, and a past tech issue in 2003 featured my article, In the Palm of Your Hand, a vision of what mobile devices would mean for blind people in the future (a future that has already happened, of course!).

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 13, 2011

Benetech President's Update Winter 2011 I’m pleased to provide you you a detailed update on Benetech for the first time in two years. Last summer I talked about our great summer interns and fellows and early this year, I sent a copy of our 20th Anniversary Report that talked about our entire history. Reviewing where we were at the beginning of 2009, it’s amazing to see the growth in impact that Benetech and our team have had in the world.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 30, 2010

I announced in this blog last month that judges in Guatemala had found two former police officers guilty in the 1984 forced disappearance of Guatemalan student and union leader Edgar Fernando García. Expert testimony by Benetech statistical consultant Daniel Guzmán provided critical evidence in the conviction of the former Guatemalan National Police officers Abraham Lancerio Gómez and Héctor Roderico Ramírez.

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Guatemala Help Analysis Statistics 149

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 22, 2010

This has been a really exciting week in Washington, DC, with the focus of today's 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's hard to imagine a world without the ADA, which was passed during my first year in the disability field. It became a model of civil rights legislation for people with disabilities, and I'm sure paved the way for the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities.

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DC Demonstration Accessibility Policy 168

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 1, 2010

I’m on the plane heading back to the U.S. after my first visit to the country of Qatar. It was a lightning visit of only two days (Sunday and Monday), with a focus on attending the World Economic Forum's Global Redesign Summit 2010 (the GRI). The government of Qatar hosted the conference, and underwrote travel and accommodation. This meeting was a follow-up for me from my attendance earlier this year at the main WEF meeting in Davos , where I presented my proposal as part of the GRI.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2009

We got great feedback about our announcement a couple of weeks ago about doing open content textbooks for K-12, thanks for funding from the US Department of Education. How were we going to top that one? By announcing we're doing open content college textbooks with Flat World Knowledge, a cool for-profit startup. I mentioned meeting one of their key people at BYU last month in a recent Beneblog post.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 22, 2009

It's easy to forget how technology spreads. I just heard about the use of Miradi and the Open Standards in the Axios Delta in Greece. They have just released their management plan (in English). What a thrill to see our software used to figure out how to conserve an exciting nature area I've only just now learned about! And, we're getting reports from all over the world of Miradi being used in countries like Indonesia and China, among many others.

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Greece Indonesia China Conservancy 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

A Guest Beneblog by Viji Dilip, This summer I visited the International Institute of Social Entrepreneurship (IISE). Situated on the banks of the Vellayani fresh water lake, on the outskirts on Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, India , IISE is a testimony to social enterprise at its very best. This is another venture of Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg who founded Braille without Borders in Lhasa, Tibet.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

The hottest book in publishing is already in Bookshare in high quality digital text. Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol launched yesterday to tremendous sales. Although it's digitally available on the Kindle and other ebook platforms, these aren't accessible to our Bookshare members. Thanks to our team to making sure our users have equal access to cultural phenomena like The Lost Symbol!

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eBook Culture Digital Accessibility 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

Last night I was able to meet Vivek Kundra, the new Chief Information Officer of the federal government, at an event organized by Full Circle Fund and the Craigslist Foundation hosted by IBM at their offices on Market Street in San Francisco. For me, it's an amazing change. In the last month, I've been able to meet Obama's CIO, the new CTO, Aneesh Chopra, and the head of the White House Office of Social Innovation, Sonal Shah, all in small group settings where every attendee got to speak.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 18, 2009

I'm getting ready to head to the Social Enterprise Summit 2009 next month in New Orleans. I'm especially excited about the significant focus on public policy and advocacy for social entrepreneurship. We were lucky to have the support of the Surdna Foundation for a policy-specific conference track. Experienced practitioners tend to engage at levels above their specific organization.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 16, 2009

Bookshare looks for publishers to partner with us to make books more available to people with disabilities. It's very exciting that we can announce that one of the largest book groups in the United States has just made the commitment: Hachette Book Group Partners with Bookshare To Make Thousands of Books Available to People with Print Disabilities. Hachette Book Group publishes under quite a number of famous imprints, such as Little Brown and Company and Grand Central.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 15, 2009

A Guest Beneblog by Ann Harrison (Benetech Communications Director) I watched a person in a wheelchair the other day navigate a tricky curb cut while crossing the street. The young man moved along skillfully without the need for assistance, but the scene brought back memories of a day in January when I accompanied a friend in a wheelchair to inauguration of President Barack Obama.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 13, 2009

We have a great addition to our leadership team at Benetech. Betsy Beaumon, formerly of BEA Systems and numerous other high tech roles (including founding her own social enterprise in the 1990s), has joined us as our new Vice President and General Manager of Literacy Programs. The press release on the appointment has much more detail. I'm particularly excited about Benetech's continued strengthening of our management team.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 11, 2009

A Guest Beneblog by Tamy Guberek (Benetech HRDAG team member from Colombia) There is important news this month from our partners at the Guatemalan National Police Archive, which has worked since 2006 with Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Workers at the archive discovered documents that led to the arrest of two active duty police officers suspected in the 1984 disappearance of university professor and labor leader Édgar Fernando Garcia.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 6, 2005

There are nice occasions where something humorous makes an important point. This presentation entitled Escape from CAPTCHA has a funny slide that captures the inaccessibility of many schemes used on web pages to keep out robot programs by requiring a human to enter obscured text. Thanks to Ivo Pletikosic for the link!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 9, 2005

Sometimes I like to update people on my travels. I've got a lot of trips planned for the next few months, and sometimes these blogs lead to people getting in touch with me about ideas for action! Right now, I'm in Kyoto, Japan, to speak at the Science and Technology in Society forum (STS). It's an interesting and high powered group, and I'm looking forward to talking about Security and Privacy of Information.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2005

Helping protect human rights information is one of our critical goals at Benetech. Information is the core of human rights work, and suppressing of such information is one of the ways perpetrators of abuses get away with their crimes. We created our Martus software to help protect human rights information. However, the confidential nature of field human rights work often makes it difficult for us to share our successes, lest we add to the risks grassroots activists already take on as part of the

Colombia 100

Colombia Technique Software Adopt 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 30, 2005

Orphan works article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian News. I'll be speaking out more on copyright issues in the coming months. A recent article mentions why Benetech is concerned about orphan works: obscure works are hard to find the copyright owner, and it costs to much to hassle with. Tim O'Reilly (who has been hugely helpful to us and especially Bookshare.org) published an op-ed in the New York Times about the Authors Guild suing Google's Library project.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 3, 2005

The Google Library question is a hot one, and we believe that this project will lead to better access for disadvantaged people. But, the disputes between Google and the publishing industry and authors needs to be concluded before things will move forward. The core question is whether Google's Library program is a fair use of copyrighted material. Good summary in the attached review post: Does Google Library violate copyright?

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Copyright Library Summary Google 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 4, 2005

Bookshare.org is Rookie of the Year Finalist from EdNET. We were delighted to get this recognition, which is a measure of our move into the education field with Bookshare.org. It wasn't until last year that we really moved into providing books for students with disabilities, and we're still in the beginning phases of providing every student with a print disability with an accessible version of every textbook and trade book they need for educational outcomes!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 14, 2005

Benetech helps drive indictment of a former dictator. Our team has contributed critical information that has helped Human Rights Watch with its campaign to bring the former dictator of Chad to justice. This is a great example of the power of information technology to advance the cause of victims of gross human rights abuses. On September 27, 2005 a Belgian judge issued an international arrest warrant charging Hissène Habré with atrocities during his 1982-90 rule.

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