Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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Bringing Millions of Books to Billions of People: Making the Book Truly Accessible

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

I believe in the power of books to change the world. That is not a particularly radical belief among librarians, but I hope to make you believe even more in the power of books. Today, we are poised at a moment in time where we can transcend the limitations of past book technologies and bring the power of books to all humans.

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A Call for Millions: Ending the Global Book Famine for the Blind

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

There’s a global book famine afflicting people with disabilities. They lack the books they need for education, employment, and social inclusion. Our Bookshare library has over 550,000 books that have been delivered digitally over 10 million times. Why is a global solution to the book famine possible now? This one does.

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Making the Book Truly Accessible for All Students

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Schools are back in session, and with them millions of American children who struggle daily to learn using traditional printed books. This includes accessible educational materials, such as e-books that can be used with computers, or mobile devices that display enlarged text or read the book aloud while also highlighting text.

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Mass Market Accessible Books

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

They were the first publisher to sign on to deliver their books electronically to Bookshare back in 2003, and gave us permission to provide their books outside the U.S. We're excited about this trend and the opportunities it creates for the commercial availability of mass market accessible books. Why is this a big deal?

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Bookshare Users Downloading Long-Awaited Apple e-Book App

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Benetech got a call recently from an excited Bookshare member who had been waiting to download our new Read2Go accessible e-book application for Apple devices. Graduate student Maria Georgakarakou, who is blind, gave us a rave review for the Read2Go app which allows those with print disabilities to listen to books in the DAISY audio format.

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Bookshare hits 50,000 books!

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Thanks to tremendous work by our volunteers, our publisher partners, our proofreading partners and our staff, we've added more than 4,000 books in the last two months and broken the 50,000 titles barrier. Now, I sure wasn't expecting us to add books at this rate! Tags: print disabled volunteer books Puerto Rico Bookshare.

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Hachette Book Group Partners with Bookshare

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Bookshare looks for publishers to partner with us to make books more available to people with disabilities. Hachette Book Group publishes under quite a number of famous imprints, such as Little Brown and Company and Grand Central. The Bookshare infrastructure is set up to make it easy to provide these specialized accessible formats.

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