Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 5, 2015

One foundation that has been a committed supporter of our work is the Lavelle Fund for the Blind. Frankly, it didn’t go as well as we had hoped, and Lavelle worked with us to retarget the grant to focus on students with visual impairments. This pilot paved the way for our work in the education field.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

Benetech has some of the juiciest and most exciting range of legal challenges I can imagine: the great majority of our legal work concerns intellectual property and human rights. We’re operating at the forefront of copyright limitations and exceptions, both in the United States and globally.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

He was also the principal author of a recent report you may have heard of: “ Advancing Global Food Security in the Face of a Changing Climate ,” which was released by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in May 2014, calling on the United States government to integrate climate change adaptation into its global food security strategy.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 7, 2013

have been asking about the Treaty of Marrakesh (formal name: The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities. Second, the Treaty allows for easier import and export of accessible versions of books and other copyrighted works. Works Covered.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

I have good news: For $5 million a year, we can build a global library that provides tens of millions of people around the world who are blind, low vision, or dyslexic free access to books that will work for them. Benetech has already solved this problem for students in the United States.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 16, 2011

. • These publisher agreements have also included permissions to distribute books outside the United States: most frequently, we are provided global rights. As a result, we are increasingly working with other disability organizations in other countries to extend Bookshare’s ability to serve people with disabilities. .

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 9, 2018

The print book doesn’t work for people who are blind, partially sighted, dyslexic, have physical limitations, people who haven’t learned to read, or people who can’t read the particular language of a specific book is written in. The next challenge we’re working on is to bring this incredible library to the rest of the world.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 28, 2013

We are a high tech organization that is not organized as a for-profit company, but instead as a nonprofit charitable corporation working to ensure technology serves all of humanity. For years, we have been working to end the worldwide book famine. This Treaty provides a tremendous tool to accelerate that work.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 15, 2013

Here in the United States, we’re especially focusing on expanding our efforts to help more disabled veterans. This campaign is a wonderful, easy way to share our work and leverage your support even further with the matching gifts that the Skoll Foundation is generously extending to the Challenge participants.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 22, 2013

Textbooks in IDEA, the United States K-12 special education law The issue of TPMs is the biggest future-proofing question in the Treaty. Amazon now ships more ebooks than print books in the United States. Authorized entities use both “hard” TPMs such as digital locks that only work with authorized players (i.e.,

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

After the last WIPO session in November, the World Blind Union convened a group of experts to review the current Treaty draft and make recommendations to the WBU on the most important issues for WBU to work on in this next session. It’s why the great majority of accessibility work is done by volunteers, charities, and with government support.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 20, 2013

Helen Keller, who worked for AFB for many years, was on the original award board for its first twenty years, starting in 1937. The book famine may be receding here in the United States with Bookshare and the increasing advent of universally designed and accessible ebooks, but globally we have only scratched the surface of the need.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 13, 2014

Consider this: when you visit your doctor about a medical issue in the United States, you can be reasonably confident that it won''t shortly be on the front page of the local newspaper. Take for example a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) rights-focused organization with which we work.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 3, 2008

Even in the United States, access to printed materials can be a significant challenge for people who are visually impaired or have other disabilities that prevent them from reading standard print. Bookshare.org has been very popular in the United States, and is now working to make its service available in other countries as well.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 4, 2010

I just heard from Jerr Boschee, the interim CEO of SEA, that registrations are already well ahead of past Summits, and that over 30% of the attendees are coming from outside the United States. Next year it will be in South Africa. Bill Strathmann of Network for Good will be our next Chair: be sure to come to SF to cheer him on!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 1, 2016

We have seen this problem here in the United States and around the world. We should not compel them to work against the interests of us, their users. If the FBI can force Apple to construct a back door for one iPhone for the U.S. and globally. This is not a theoretical problem.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 12, 2009

I work in membership at Bookshare and I believe in bilingualism. Why shouldn’t visually impaired and disabled students in the United States have easy access to the study of the languages? Guest blog by Paddy Sullivan Hola! My name is Paddy Sullivan.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 18, 2012

Like going to hackathons and wish you could get paid to work on a good cause full time? Check out recent press coverage of our work, featuring the head of our human rights team, Dr. Patrick Ball, in Foreign Policy magazine and NPR's On The Media. If hired, ability to provide proof of eligibility to work in the United States.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

We recently had a big article in SpeakUP, the journal of the United States Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. We're starting to work with the makers of these devices to add support for Bookshare.org books, since they typically have text-to-speech capabilities built into them already.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 22, 2010

The staff I work with at Benetech are committed to the communities that we serve with our technology. Washington Square Magazine, which is published by Viji’s alma matter San Jose State University, included a profile of Viji in their most recent issue. In countries outside the U.S.,

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

I’m excited to share highlights from our work and its significance for the multitudes we serve. Delivering Benetech''s statement to the WIPO diplomatic conference That’s why I’ve been actively advocating for a global copyright exception modeled after the great exception in the United States that made Bookshare possible.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 22, 2008

Department of Education includes overseeing OSEP, the people who are funding our Bookshare for Education project to serve every student with a print disability in the United States. He had spotted the Frontline PBS special on our work in Guatemala, which had led to him deciding he wanted to visit us. Tracy's brief at the U.S.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 3, 2013

As we have explained in other Beneblog and Bookshare blog posts, these are exciting times for everyone who has been working to meet the imperative to provide people with print disabilities equal access to published information. This allows a much broader group of experts to keep working on the problem.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

The biggest area of our work to date is for schools in the U.S., When we do, almost all of them are inadvertent: basically users who don't understand how technical things work. Work directly with publishers and authors. SFWA also agreed to encourage their authors to voluntarily contribute their works to Bookshare.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 2, 2007

This funding is to fully support all schools and students with qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and post-secondary, with access to the entire Bookshare.org collection of accessible electronic books and to software for reading those books.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 17, 2008

The goal is to get more people working to make this happen: getting access tech to every person in the world who needs it. We're working with assistive tech vendors to make a better player for dyslexic students, and we expect the DAISY standard to work great for these students as part of Bookshare for Education.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Although reports of the massacre appeared in the United States, Salvadoran army and government leaders denied them and, all too soon, El Mozote was forgotten. He went on to become Benetech’s Vice President of Human Rights and led our human rights work for nine years. Photo credits: Rom Srinivasan and Patrick Ball.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 17, 2014

For on January 17, 1984, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that consumers could tape their favorite TV shows and watch them later without the copyright holder’s consent. For this IP system to work for all, it’s critical that copyright exceptions such as fair use be defended as a laboratory for creativity.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

The products and prices seemed similar to what I'd see in the United States. Plus, not all work is done to U.S. environmental or workplace safety laws (even in their weakened post-Bush state). I was surprised to watch linemen at work, literally hanging from the electrical wires!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 6, 2009

As a non-profit organization, our work with the TRC and our statistical report was made possible through the support of United States Department of State Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) and several other donors, which are listed in our report. Head office of the TRC in Monrovia, Liberia.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 22, 2009

I’ve been working in libraries for nine years. Over that time, I’ve seen a lot of different libraries, from both the back room, where I normally work in technical services, and the front in public services. It’s like every library I’ve ever worked in, as it should be. at its core. Bookshare is also picking up steam in India.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 27, 2008

The biggest issue I'm still working on is one I mentioned two years ago: getting access to the textbooks in the National Instructional Materials Access Center (NIMAC). He is a huge figure in disability policy, and it was an honor to get to talk to him about what we're doing. The Officer of Special Education Programs (OSEP) at the Dept.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 26, 2014

In the United States, there are all too many students like Kevin, who are denied equal opportunity to engage in the same curriculum as their peers without disabilities. In 2004, the United States passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act , requiring schools to provide special education services to eligible students.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 27, 2008

He came back from a visit to the United States impressed with McDonald's as a service delivery system, and decided to bring that same systematic approach to eye care. Certainly, this is an example of where it works well. I visited the main hospital in Madurai, where Aravind was founded by the late Dr. Venkataswamy ("Dr.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 10, 2009

The Kindle2's text-to-speech feature wasn't something that actually worked for blind people, but you could imagine how a software update could make this into an incredible product. We have an action by Amazon that sets back years of work to make ebooks accessible. But, it's a dream that the commercial ebook vendors keep dashing.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 8, 2010

The treaty does a lot of things, but let me highlight a few: • A global norm that there be copyright exceptions that allow for the making of accessible versions of copyrighted works for free on a nonprofit basis by a broad range of people or organizations, without having to get permission from the rightsholders. What would I work on?

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 4, 2007

It's great when one of our team is honored for their work, and Carrie Karnos has been one of our top Bookshare.org volunteers for years, including being Volunteer of the Year. Matilda Ziegler Foundation for the Blind, which funds this magazine as well as eye research programs at universities across the United States.

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