Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 26, 2013

In the post-film Q&A, Iram said she aspired to do for Pakistan what Slum Dog Millionaire did for India. Iram is mainly pinning her hopes on festivals and a theatrical release in Pakistan and India. She succeeds in showing us, rather than telling, something true and challenging. If you get a chance to see this film, take it!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 7, 2013

We began with Hindi and Tamil, two of the most-spoken languages in India, and have recently added Arabic, which opened up our services to countries all across the Middle East and Northern Africa. The third blog post in this series on Bookshare International will describe our adventures creating the library’s first offerings in Arabic.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 10, 2013

After visiting India in 1949, Wofford became a lifelong advocate of Gandhian nonviolence. He even co-wrote a book with his late wife Clare, India Afire (1951), which urged the civil rights movement in America to adopt Gandhi’s strategy of nonviolent action (see this correspondence between Wofford and King).

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 15, 2014

Thus far, more than 75 countries have signed the Treaty, and in June India became the first country to ratify it. We hope that many other countries will follow India’s ratification. The Treaty will take effect only after 20 ratifications are presented to WIPO. Its signature period has now ended.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 22, 2010

Viji, who is from India, received a BA in accounting from Madras University and moved with her husband to the Bay Area. Since Viji was raised in India, she began looking at the educational challenges faced by people from that country. In countries outside the U.S.,

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San Jose Profile India United Kingdom 109

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

If our Bookshare team is trying to help a blind student in India get a book she needs for university, make it easy for us to do that. I understand from our peers in India that he was also essential in the passing of India’s recent copyright exception.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 27, 2015

We’re doing a ton of work with partners in India , the first country to ratify it, to allow people in India to take full advantage of India’s now-favorable copyright environment. I was able to share some of our plans at Benetech around implementing the Treaty.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

We’re already delivering services at scale in three other countries—Canada, the UK, and India. Bookshare adapts to the needs of all readers with a disability that makes reading hard, whether they read with their eyes, ears, or fingers. Very few philanthropic opportunities come with the chance to solve a global problem with modest risk.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 29, 2009

This is a guy who as his daughter put it, piled books onto a little vegetable cart and trundled it into the market place so that the common man in small town India would be exposed to the literature of Tolstoy, Gibran, Ruskin and others. Tags: India Meghani Bookshare Gujarati. And he worked to abridge and translate much of their work.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

In the rural region of Ranipet in Tamil Nadu, India, 500 Bookshare texts, which had their spines removed for scanning, have been acquired by the Vedavalli Vidyalaya school. After books are scanned and uploaded into the digital Bookshare library, they are still used in their printed form by readers around the world.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 18, 2008

The main reason for my visit to South India was the National Seminar on Print Access For All, which was organized by the dynamic Mr. Krishnaswamy. He's really helped us move forward with our India projects, thanks to our India project manager, Viji Dilip, who joined me there and who has made all of these great Chennai connections for us.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 3, 2008

Reflections on an internship with Bookshare.org in Chennai, India Made possible through support from the Amherst College Center for Community Engagement Anna Reid, religion major, class of 2010 Anna Reid with employees of Worth Trust, a South Indian organization that provides vocational training and employment for people with disabilities.

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Accessibility India United States Reflection 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2010

Many of the publishers do provide us with permissions do not have global rights, and limit the availability of these books to certain jurisdictions • We first launched international Bookshare in India and have more than 1000 members there, as well as permissions agreements with more than ten publishers in India • We have recently concluded agreements (..)

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

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. The participants would get hands on training at a non profit organization in India and will train in all aspects of non profit management.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2009

I went to their map and quickly found some other leading social entrepreneurs that are part of the PWX network, folks I've had the pleasure of meeting many times in the past decade, people like Joe Madiath of Gram Vikas in Orissa, India, and Bunker Roy of the Barefoot College in northern India. You're known by the company you keep!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 8, 2008

Virginia and Kate, my wife and daughter, volunteered to come along with me on my one-week trip to South India. South India is famous for its temples. So, I extended it to two weeks and added a trip to Madurai as part of that. After visiting Aravind Eye Hospital and Aurolab, we started on our vacation time.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

We’re going to demonstrate what this could look like by piloting Bookshare International at scale in India. We just announced a Commitment to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative , to increase our impact in India by an order of magnitude. The Treaty was signed on the spot by over 50 countries.

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India Literacy Global Accessibility 142

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 7, 2010

I learned that in some parts of India everyone has a cell phone but few have indoor plumbing or access to clean water – change is happening. The impacts these people and their organizations make are being felt world-wide. Using technology as a base for knowing change is possible, change is happening. What did I learn last night?

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 9, 2014

She noted that each year the Foundation gathers government policymakers from its three target regions (West Africa, East Africa, and India) to discuss best practices in cost-effective interventions in education.

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Education Philanthropy Africa Foundation 164

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 25, 2008

We have a partnership with the Worth Trust in Chennai, India, to do data entry for Bookshare.org, funded by the Lavelle Fund. OK, there were no computers when I was growing up in India but the current going "off" was very common. I blogged about it in May: Scanning in Tamil Nadu.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 6, 2006

I asked the folks there if they knew of less expensive accommodations, since the Taj Palace Hotel where the India Economic Summit was held was fabulous but also more than I'd ever paid per night in the U.S.! The meeting was held at what used to be the Viceroy of India's lodge in New Delhi, and steeped with history.

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University India Spain Student 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 19, 2006

Just after returning from India and Bangladesh, I received word that one of my key contacts and hosts had suddenly passed away. He has been described as the pioneer of Talking Books in India, and had been campaigning for a copyright law change to make it easier to provide access to accessible books.

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Bangladesh India Law Copyright 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 27, 2008

The Times of India covered the story during my visit, Disabled in city help blind in US. Plus, as we get more permissions from India publishers, we'll be able to source English language books locally. Worth Trust is a social enterprise with the goal of employing people with disabilities. for proofreading in the future.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 27, 2008

The first thing I noticed was that the start-up costs had been supported by Lavelle Fund, which is also funding our first major project in India (more on that later). Aravind has a plan to quadruple their activities in India over the next few years, and I am not skeptical at all about their ability to meet those objectives.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Thanks to the support of the EB team, we now have direct access to digital versions of many important reference series, along with the ability to provide these books to people with qualifying print disabilities in Canada, the UK, India and all over the world!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2014

The Oak Foundation just awarded us a grant to provide accessible content to people with qualifying learning differences (like dyslexia) in Brazil, India, and the United Kingdom. The Lavelle Foundation is supporting us to expand Bookshare in India, which will likely be our first full-scale replication of Bookshare outside the U.S.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 16, 2011

Canada, Europe and India. . • This rapid increase in our collection size has been due to extensive support from publishers: the majority of new books added to Bookshare last year and this year have been voluntarily provided to us by 130 publisher partners in the U.S., These include 6 of the top 10 publishers in the U.S.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 11, 2013

We’ve already built a collection of titles in Hindi and Tamil, two of the most-spoken languages in India, and last summer we released our first accessible collection in Arabic.

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United Arab Emirates Qatar eBook Language 162

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 20, 2015

Steve went to India for more tests. Carol explained that these smart students lacked the connections and people skills to get jobs after graduation, and that Daproim wanted to give them a leg up in going on to tech careers once they graduated from school and from working for Daproim. Unfortunately, early last year, Steve got sick.

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Kenya Social Student India 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 11, 2010

Thanks to a generous grant from the Lavelle Foundation, Bookshare has been able to work with Worth Trust, a nonprofit with offices in Chennai, India. I now feel even I can help people living in America!!”

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 24, 2006

China and India were big topics of this Forum. India and its neighbors are very well represented, partly because of the entrepreneurial culture of the region and because of the huge issues in the area. Plus, India threw one heck of a party on Saturday night, with Hindi pop singers. We danced at the India party.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 12, 2006

I had an introduction to the one of key leaders in India's outsourcing revolution, Mr. F.C. We had a great conversation high above south Mumbai in the Air India building, which overlooks Mumbai's peninsula. The reason I came to Mumbai was to visit Tata Consultancy Services, the giant outsourcing firm.

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Consultant Service India Literacy 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

The recent Indian copyright amendment that creates an exception similar to Section 121 in the United States, which makes it possible for us to set up a Bookshare-style crowd-sourced library in India with local partner NGOs. How to legally minimize the import duties on tablets and smartphones that are donated to us in the U.S.,

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 28, 2014

I explained Benetech’s efforts to grow the impact of our Bookshare library globally, specifically discussing partnerships with groups in India and Kenya. As someone who has been writing software for blind people for 25 years, we were in my element!

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Ideas Kenya Brain Software 223

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

And we’re now making this happen in countries beyond the United States who, like India, have implemented Marrakesh without commercial limitation provisions. We now have volunteers throughout India adding local language titles such as Tamil into Bookshare.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 31, 2008

When Brij heard I was going to South India, he insisted I visit his team in Pondicherry. One of the most exciting literacy social enterprises that I've run into is PlanetRead. Founded by Indian Institute of Management professor Brij Kothari, the first concept was same language subtitling. Planet Read added subtitles to Bollywood music videos.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 22, 2009

Bookshare is also picking up steam in India. We have members all over the world, but Bookshare India is the biggest outside of the United States right now. That global connection is a huge way that worlds connect at Bookshare. We are very proud of that program. What’s more, Bookshare allows for individuals to grow and change.

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