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Betsy Beaumon on Benetech's Literacy Program

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The Year That Was and the New Year Ahead Guest Beneblog by Betsy Beaumon, Benetech's VP and General Manager of the Literacy Program 2012 was a year of titanic shifts in the fields of consumer technology, education, and publishing, along with the requisite challenges brought about by such rapid change. Thanks again! Is Spanish more your bag?

Literacy 166
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Robin Seaman, Agent of Inclusion

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The nonprofit Benetech team built the revolutionary Bookshare library for this community, all online, and based on the powerfully flexible ebook. You can take an ebook, push a button and make it Braille. This results in an ebook, which can be shared by Bookshare legally with many thousands of other disabled readers.

eBook 100
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Bookshare without Borders: #1/3

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Bookshare , our flagship literacy program, is the world’s largest accessible library and currently serves more than 230,000 members with visual and learning disabilities. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as literacy remains an elusive dream for the majority of the world’s people with print disabilities.

India 225
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Bringing Millions of Books to Billions of People: Making the Book Truly Accessible

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Literacy and access to knowledge underpins just about every social good, from education, to economic development, to health, to women’s empowerment, democracy and respect for human rights. We can use the same ebook file to deliver the content ten different ways. I believe in the power of books to change the world. We can do better!

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Accessibility Excitement in Geneva

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Even though Benetech doesn’t have donor funding for this, our VP of Global Literacy, Betsy Beaumon, and I thought it would be worthwhile to attend this meeting. Imagine a library for people with disabilities where you can’t have a book on your shelves if a patron could buy the book in that format.

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Why I’m Scared of the SOPA Bill by Jim Fruchterman

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

We provide accessible ebooks that can be spoken aloud, turned into Braille or large print. Ironically, many of these users might buy commercial ebooks, but the anti-piracy technology built into many ebook systems are not compatible with the technology these users employ to get the books in Braille or synthetic speech.

eBook 107