Benetech Wins Skoll and UN Foundation Award to Bring Books to People with Print Disabilities in India
By Benetech, posted on April 17, 2015We are delighted to share that the Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation awarded Benetech a grant to bring written content to millions of people with visual impairments in India. This new grant will enable Benetech to scale up our Bookshare library services in India, where people with visual impairments face a severe dearth of accessible books in formats they can read.
The award, under the Skoll Foundation / UN Foundation Scaling Social Innovation Grants, supports a partnership between Benetech and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to expand production and delivery of books in accessible formats in local Indian languages. The accessible books will be made available through Benetech’s Bookshare library and the International Book Exchange service of the WIPO-hosted Accessible Books Consortium (ABC). This project amplifies the significant achievement gained by the adoption of WIPO’s Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or otherwise Print Disabled. The Treaty creates a global copyright exception model for people with print disabilities and opens up tremendous opportunities to improve access to books and information in developing countries.
The Skoll Foundation / United Nations Foundation Scaling Social Innovation Grants program funds partnerships between social entrepreneurs and United Nations agencies with the goal of scaling up innovations that benefit people around the world. Benetech is one of three winners of this unique grant program. The Skoll Foundation and the United Nations Foundation announced the winners today at the Skoll World Forum, held this week in Oxford.
Read more about this award in the joint Skoll Foundation/ United Nations Foundation’s press release.