Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

At Benetech, we always ask ourselves how our existing successful programs can reach more people who need our services and how we can apply technology in new ways to enrich and improve more lives. These milestones represent a giant leap forward in the number of students and individuals we serve. The majority of our members are U.S.

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Literacy eBook Global Audio 129

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2019

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.

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eBook United States Literacy Library 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 27, 2014

“They get frustrated and don’t want to read,” she says, “but access to digital books and reading technologies changed all that for Zach.” Zach Bryant The change happened when Zach was in high school and his Assistive Technology teacher introduced him to Benetech’s Bookshare library. Thank you for your support!

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Challenge eBook Social Ohio 144

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 20, 2013

This is the field where I found my life’s calling, applying technology to meet critical needs of society, where the market is likely to fail. And when the idea of a peer-to-peer ebook library came to me, it was George who I went to with the idea. I especially want to acknowledge two people who helped make this award possible.

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eBook Award Copyright Syria 221

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 10, 2014

It became a burden to his family and caregivers to constantly drop what they were doing to turn a page, so he began seeking out ebooks. It also demonstrates how each ebook that is added to the Bookshare collection is a brick in our members’ foundation of independence and inclusion. Eventually he had to ask others to turn pages for him.

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Life Gift eBook France 147

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 21, 2012

While our activities often creates jobs beyond the core high technology jobs around software development and user support, we don't see it as our core competency. The DDD student staff people work half days at DDD, proofing textbooks to make them accessible to students with print disabilities.

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Laos Data Digital New York City 235

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 3, 2013

In what is known as the “ braille provision ,” the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 mandates that the teams who help write educational plans for students with disabilities presume that all blind and visually impaired children should be taught Braille unless it is determined to be inappropriate. Accordingly, U.S.

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Literacy eBook Images Accessibility 208

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

People with print disabilities around the world have a right to high-quality ebooks that they can read with assistive technology. These ebooks can quickly be turned into Braille, large print or be read aloud by a synthetic voice synthesizer. These texts will be available in early 2012.?

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International Brazil Austria eBook 166

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2014

How can we use technology in a new way to improve people’s lives that is an order of magnitude better? Can we help stimulate the creation of far more technology-for-good ventures? Technology currently serves privileged groups through tools that provide access to education, literacy, health, and justice.

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Literacy eBook United Kingdom Accessibility 158

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 5, 2015

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 experience helped us prove the potential of Bookshare to meet the needs of students with disabilities. Even in the United States, this was true of probably a quarter of our student users.

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Fund India United States eBook 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 16, 2011

The goal of the DIAGRAM R&D Center is to greatly improve access to graphical information for students with print disabilities (for example, helping blind students get access to important graphics inside textbooks). But, it’s turned out to be one of the best surveys of assistive technology we’ve ever seen.

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Images Alternative Student Accessibility 194

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 20, 2015

She runs a for-profit social enterprise named Daproim that provides data entry services using disadvantaged students as their primary workforce. Bookshare is our large digital library for students with disabilities such as blindness or dyslexia. Daproim has more than 7600 applications from Kenyan students who want to work there.

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Kenya Social Student India 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 16, 2014

My personal goal is to channel the aspirations of the technology community to do more social good. More and more of my time is spent around both raising money and raising awareness of how much more could be done with technology to increase social impact. Consider third grade student Brennan Draves.

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Open Source Africa Zimbabwe Malawi 183

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

OCTOBER 15, 2012

With technology, you can do incredible things, but with a galvanized community of supporters who work together toward a greater good, we can do anything. By partnering with all these stakeholders, we reinvented the traditional library for people with print disabilities and brought modern ebook technology to this underserved community.

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Library Student eBook Accessibility 164

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 2, 2012

Betsy Beaumon, Benetech VP and General Manager of Bookshare During the event, our Bookshare staff offered demos of our Bookshare library and our Go Read accessible ebook reader for Android. They also demoed Read2Go, the accessible ebook application for the Apple OS and Route 66 Literacy, Benetech’s online literacy instructional program.

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Celebrate Google Literacy Library 145

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 4, 2013

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!

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Literacy Program United Arab Emirates Student 166

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

which get Bookshare at no cost when serving students with qualifying disabilities (thanks to funding from the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. The most common error is a school signing up all of their students with visual impairments and all learning disabilities. Employ "Social Digital Rights Management" technology.

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Copyright Social Law Student 158

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 27, 2013

In my contribution to Ron’s book, I discuss the framework that guides us at Benetech, the technology nonprofit I lead. When I first started pursuing the idea of using technology to solve challenging social problems, it was a pretty radical idea. Exit Options: Each of our new ventures needs at least three exit options.

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Develop Social Library eBook 144

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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eBook Accessibility United States Student 203

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

The Bookshare promise to American students with disabilities is that if they need a book for education, Bookshare will ensure that they have it. Under our copyright exception, we simply buy a copy of the needed print book, scan it using optical character recognition, and create an accessible ebook.

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Copyright United States Library eBook 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 10, 2009

But, it's a dream that the commercial ebook vendors keep dashing. We have an action by Amazon that sets back years of work to make ebooks accessible. If Kindle ebooks were available on the Web, other developers could fix many of its limitations such as lousy support for images, problems with complex layouts, inaccessibility.

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Amazon Accessibility eBook Problem 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 10, 2014

This reality changed when both Kevin and Sophia learned about the accessible online library Bookshare , an initiative of Silicon Valley technology nonprofit Benetech. With its rapidly growing collection of over 225,000 (and counting) accessible ebooks, Bookshare is the world’s largest library of its kind.

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Data Classroom Measure Accessibility 168

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 17, 2014

It also underscores just how critical a balanced copyright law is for technology innovation. As a different kind of Silicon Valley tech company—a nonprofit with a pure focus on social good—our goal is to see that the best of technology gets applied to social needs left unaddressed by for-profit businesses. copyright law. In the U.S.,

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Copyright Law Accessibility Library 196

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 18, 2007

We need to now spend a lot more time acquainting Washington decision makers about why OSEP made an inspired choice in selecting Bookshare.org as the provider of books for print disabled students nationally. Big opportunity to change the world with technology! That's an issue I'm quite passionate about. Big challenges.

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Guam Washington eBook Student 100

Qgiv

MARCH 30, 2022

Carolyn is a major gift fundraiser and nonprofit communications expert who uses technology to amplify her impact and do more with less. CA: For my students and returning students, you may also wish to pursue a college degree in nonprofit management, which normally includes coursework in fundraising. Meet Carolyn Appleton!

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Grant Interview Los Angeles Texas 52

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 24, 2007

Amazon.com: Kindle This is the first ebook product that gives me a vision of where the book is going to go. I am imagining students with complete libraries without having to carry twenty pounds in their backpacks! And, while not perfect, it gives a vision of where this technology will go.

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Ipod eBook Flash New York 100

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. The ability of that Indian blind student shouldn’t depend on whether she can get her university or a local blindness charity to do it for her. That’s so 20th Century (or 19th?)!

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Copyright India Library United States 158

Tech Soup

JUNE 4, 2014

The finalists are an impressive roster of charities from diverse fields doing great work in nonprofit technology. This early childhood program initially serves 400 preschoolers and their families, providing them with up to 40,000 eBooks and learning apps. Google then invited the public to vote for the top winners.

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San Francisco Award Google Challenge 61

Connection Cafe

MAY 28, 2015

At Blackbaud, our most recent pro bono champs come from our Products team, the group that scopes, designs, codes, tests and launches technology solutions that power the business of philanthropy. If you need some final inspiration, check out this eBook we produced with A Billion+Change and Riggs Partners to celebrate #GivingTuesday.

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Companies Service Blackbaud Social 20

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 5, 2016

The common link among our projects is information technology, which can be applied to just about every aspect of the social sector. Yet, nonprofits frequently lag behind the for-profit world in applying technology to their work. Benetech has a unique opportunity to repeatedly use technology as a social change agent.

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Change eBook United States Conservancy 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 28, 2011

We provide accessible ebooks that can be spoken aloud, turned into Braille or large print. We serve over 150,000 students with disabilities alone with free online services funded by the Department of Education (however, nothing contained in this post has anything to do with our funders). We do it for human rights groups.

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eBook China Copyright Library 277

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

DECEMBER 8, 2011

We provide accessible ebooks that can be spoken aloud, turned into Braille or large print. We serve over 150,000 students with disabilities alone with free online services funded by the Department of Education (however, nothing contained in this post has anything to do with our funders). We do it for human rights groups.

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eBook Copyright China Law 107

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 11, 2013

Developing Open Source Software For Social Good For example, in the last few months, individual employees have used volunteer hours to create fun interactive, online learning tools for educators and students using Mozilla’s Webmaker. And, in so doing, we can help amplify the real, global impact they have on the lives of real people every day.

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Open Source Lesson Tech Project 118

Care2

AUGUST 7, 2007

57) Mobile (15) Nonprofit Benchmark Studies (15) Nonprofit Events (36) nptech (8) Online Advertising (5) Online Advocacy (47) Online Fundraising (97) Online Marketing (59) Online Organizing (32) SEO (3) Social Networking (109) Technology (31) Trends (51) Video (27) Volunteering (2) Web 2.0 (60) Response: Should you social network?

Causes 48

Causes Facebook Social Media Advocacy 48

Care2

JULY 24, 2007

57) Mobile (15) Nonprofit Benchmark Studies (15) Nonprofit Events (36) nptech (8) Online Advertising (5) Online Advocacy (47) Online Fundraising (97) Online Marketing (59) Online Organizing (32) SEO (3) Social Networking (109) Technology (31) Trends (51) Video (27) Volunteering (2) Web 2.0 (60) Response: Should you social network?

Causes 48

Causes Facebook Social Media Advocacy 48

Eric Jacobsen Blog

SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

Surges in technology made virtually anything seem possibly if we just give it enough time and effort. And with the introduction of smart technology, this information is only one click or thumb-tap away. Receive his new ebook , Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or follow him on Twitter. You can do it!

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Classroom eBook Generation Leadership 40

Connection Cafe

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

Even though we’ve had an account for over two years, we only became serious with our Instagram strategy last spring and have seen a rapid growth in engagement from students and local brands. Let Students Run Your Instagram Account. And the best part – this idea came from a student. What’s Next?

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Student Social Media Photo Application 44