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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.

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Advancing Reading Equality with Bookshare’s Exponential Growth

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

I’m thrilled to share with you some of the recent amazing impact of Bookshare , a Benetech Global Literacy initiative and the largest accessible online library of copyrighted content for people with print disabilities. a11y accessibility Bookshare Braille DAISY ebooks Global Literacy print disabilities Reading'

Literacy 129
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On the Future of Braille: Thoughts by Radical Braille Advocates

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Guest Beneblog by Betsy Beaumon, VP and General Manager, Benetech’s Global Literacy Program. Betsy Beaumon I recently had the honor to speak at the first-ever Braille Summit , hosted on June 19-21, 2013 by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS) and Perkins School for the Blind.

Literacy 208
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10X: CEO’s Update: Spring 2014

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Technology currently serves privileged groups through tools that provide access to education, literacy, health, and justice. The application allows any user to send information—including photos, videos, audio, or text—simply and securely to a Martus account. Our Bookshare online library is continuing to multiply its impact.

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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. By this, I am not just talking about the publishing business, but also the nonprofit libraries committed to universal accessibility.

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Leveraging Impact through Technology (LIT)

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Of course, accessibility is right up Benetech’s alley and the focus of our Literacy program. In my Fall 2011 President's Update , I mentioned some of our incredible recent achievements in this core program, including the amazing milestones of our Bookshare library. This innovative approach is now opening up completely new horizons.

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Accessibility Excitement in Geneva

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

There was also an associated effort called the Trusted Intermediary Global Accessible Resources (TIGAR) project, to ease the exchange of accessible book files between libraries for the blind and print disabled. My biggest argument was the “library with holes” problem. The view of the World Blind Union was that the rightsholders (i.e.,