Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 19, 2013

We’ve started a Benetech blog that will feature voices from across our organization (one that is separate from my personal Beneblog ). We’ve designed the site to be fully searchable, making it easy to find the information you need, and developed new content to convey the impact of our work and provide resources we hope will be useful.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Access to information and knowledge is a basic human right and a necessary first step towards personal, economic, and social development. The good news is that there are now unprecedented opportunities to transform the lives of these millions by removing barriers of access to information  —   and this is where you can help.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 7, 2011

You're absolutely right that information quality comes from people and that data's fitness for a particular purpose is very contextual. To continue in this direction, let’s look at how people use this information. The people who are in most need of information about humanitarian disasters are the organized responders.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 10, 2011

Here’s a sample of our accomplishments: Martus , our secure, open-source information management software for human rights defenders continued to empower many human rights groups worldwide to secure thousands of stories of human rights violations and to use this information strategically to advance their causes.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

All the organizations participating in the Challenge are recipients of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. The funds contributed through our Bookshare for Veterans Challenge will be used to enable our Bookshare team to expand its services and outreach to veterans who need access to books and information.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2014

We want to help lead the charge into a future where the advantages of digital information touch the lives of all people, not just of the richest and most able five percent of humanity. First, we are working to lower the barrier to the use of strong encryption to automatically protect the privacy of sensitive information.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 7, 2013

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. We invite you to read more information about our international membership.

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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.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 17, 2011

Guest Beneblog by Patrick Ball, Jeff Klingner, and Kristian Lum After the earthquake in Haiti, Ushahidi organized a centralized text messaging system to allow people to inform others about people trapped under damaged buildings and other humanitarian crises. Kristian Lum has analyzed data from the same sources that the JRC team used.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

The latest session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) just concluded last week. We did not look at this as legal experts, but rather as organizations that are dedicated to serving people with disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 10, 2014

When Kevin was in kindergarten he had an organic brain injury, which forced him to have to relearn everything from walking to using the bathroom. We’re witnessing how data-driven insights are becoming a prerequisite in decision-making and in the practical work of policy and social service organizations.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 3, 2013

As organizations,” Osborne said, “we must liberate spending to focus on the promotion, learning and innovation around braille,” and recognize that we ought to embrace today’s changing economics and technology so that braille can be part of an equation which delivers access to information for all, not just to those who can afford it.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 18, 2010

A Guest Beneblog by Vijaya Tripathi As outreach coordinator for Martus , Benetech’s secure software application, I travel to many countries where human rights defenders need tools to gather, organize and back up information about human rights violations. Human rights monitors in Nigeria continue to be harassed.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 17, 2014

And, Benetech is committed as an organization to all of these six principles. Accessibility However useful the Section 121 exception has been for Bookshare, it is very narrowly drawn to cover nonprofit organizations and government agencies with a primary purpose to serve people with disabilities. But, it’s not the only one!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 12, 2014

As the parent nonprofit organization of the Bookshare online library, a leading provider of accessible books to people with print disabilities in the U.S., You can read more about our position in the Amicus Brief , which we filed jointly with our peer organization, Learning Ally. The Authors Guild then appealed the ruling.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 22, 2013

Each new content delivery system is eagerly tested by technically oriented blind individuals or the organizations serving them, often to result in disappointment and widespread advice to avoid wasting limited resources on inaccessible content. Authorized entities are against TPMs to the extent that they interfere with accessibility.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

You may already know that I plan in earnest to provide my personal President’s Updates as quarterly informal reports, but that all too often I fall behind on this well-intended schedule—as is the case with the update you’re reading now! It’s part of our larger effort to build a strong, organization-wide culture of communications.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 15, 2014

One year ago, on June 28, 2013, at a diplomatic conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, the World Intellectual Property Organization ( WIPO ) agreed on a historic international copyright exception for people with print disabilities. And when you sign the treaty, you haven’t succeeded.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 11, 2013

The initial collection has already inspired a new partner to come on board: the Emirates Association for the Visually Impaired ( EAVI ), a nonprofit organization that serves people with print disabilities in the United Arab Emirates. EAVI will purchase Bookshare memberships for any of its members interested in subscribing to our service.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 28, 2014

If Andrew and his peers can’t cure their blindness, could we help them with access to information? The human brain is an extremely complex organ, but it should be getting easier to tune up different exercises for different recovery needs. Andrew challenged me on that idea. Of course, we’d have to focus on local language content.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2014

That’s why we were excited to participate in the Skoll Foundation’s second annual Skoll Social Entrepreneurs Challenge , a fundraising campaign committed to strengthening the capacity of organizations like ours to accelerate impact on some of the most critical issues of our time. The Challenge ran for six weeks through December 5th.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 1, 2011

Benetech is a Silicon Valley nonprofit organization developing innovative technology solutions with a primary goal of positive social change rather than profit. We rely on open source tools for information exchange and development tools, as appropriate. We avoid competing with our partner organizations. 2 We get stuff done.

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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.

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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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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 24, 2010

In the statute: "authorized entity" means a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities; In this case, authorized means authorized under the statute. (and

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 19, 2008

It was organized by The Nature Conservancy, but had folks from many of the other leading groups. At the end of the day, I was part of a meeting of leading conservation techies talking about how to share information among different groups. Sharing information among competitors is always difficult, and delicate.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

The publishing industry and disability organizations both agreed on this provision of copyright law. Educate and inform schools and our users about the qualifications. I'm writing this blog post because one of the senior people at AAP suggested it would be a good idea to share this information with the world.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 14, 2012

We also discussed targeted, intensive trainings-of-trainers with partner organizations that specifically want to have in-house Martus instructors, with the goal of creating a loosely interconnected global web of trainers. The more people working to develop Martus, the faster and more sustainably we’ll be able to make these changes a reality.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 5, 2008

Here's more information: Benetech and the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) have released Miradi, a user-friendly software program that allows nature conservation practitioners to design, manage, monitor, and learn from their projects to more effectively meet their conservation goals. press release for more information.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

Here's my kick-off post for the thread: I was impressed when I heard Tim O'Reilly, one of the main thought leaders in information technology, recommending to all tech folks last year that they Work on Stuff that Matters. If you're looking for a new job, look for a company or organization that offers the chance to work on Stuff That Matters.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

Don’t create a global Swiss registry of nonprofit organizations qualified to use exceptions. I saw Rahul hard at work on the original drafting team for the treaty, and he had been one of the most dedicated advocates for assuring access to information for people with print disabilities. That’s so 20th Century (or 19th?)!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

We’re not an advocacy organization, but our technical insights are in great demand from advocates. An intellectual property manual done from the standpoint of an organization that is dedicated to openness, rather than proprietary approaches. Human Rights Program policies: what are contingency/crisis plans for our staff?

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

As a foundation, we do more than just write a check; through our community, philanthropic and corporate partnerships, we help nonprofit organizations find new revenue sources to become more self-sustaining. We're collaborative, bringing a valuable vantage point that stems from having worked with hundreds of community-based organizations.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

Our experience successfully building Bookshare under the United States copyright exception, which has no such commercial availability limitation, informs this strong opinion. As an organization that puts this disability-specific copyright exception into practice, I can say with confidence that the U.S. exception model works well here.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 5, 2010

It’s certainly within our technical capabilities to provide a basic level of access to the information and communication capabilities of the Internet and web through broadband. Disability information clearinghouses have been set up in the past, and have failed to fully meet the need or realize the potential of such a solution.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 20, 2013

Even back then, we included information about his service in the box of each Arkenstone Reader because we knew people would rather not have to scan a book before reading it! First, one of last year’s Migel Award winners, George Kerscher. And when the idea of a peer-to-peer ebook library came to me, it was George who I went to with the idea.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 16, 2010

Benetech is committed to developing technology for underserved communities that can reap big benefits from improved access to information. Miradi is a joint venture between Benetech and the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP), a consortium of global environmental organizations committed to improving the practice of conservation.

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