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On the evening of March 28, 2006, an improvised explosive device (IED) hit Staff Sergeant Jay Wilkerson’s Humvee, which was part of a convoy heading from Habbaniyah, Iraq, back to Baghdad. It turned out that Jay suffered from hemianopsia, a loss of half of the visual field. For Jay and scores of other veterans with service-related disabilities, reading standard print can be difficult, if not impossible. For them, Bookshare—our Global Literacy initiative and the world’s largest accessible digital library for people with qualified print disabilities—opens a lifeline to reading. If you are looking for a way to make a real difference in honor of Veterans Day, please support our Bookshare for Veterans crowdfunding campaign and give veterans the gift of reading.

Palo Alto, California, November 6, 2013 — Benetech, Human Rights Watch and WITNESS celebrate today ten years of Benetech’s tool for secure human rights information management. Martus (Greek for “witness”) is an open source, free software application that allows users anywhere in the world to securely gather and organize information about human rights violations.

Social Enterprise Buzz, a media company dedicated to covering social enterprise news from around the world, featured our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, and his journey navigating legal issues and creating social good throughout Benetech’s history.

News website TechCrunch cited Benetech as a model for Silicon Valley to broaden its reach and engage in addressing social problems.

Earlier this month, on October 3rd, I had the honor of representing Benetech at the 2013 Diversability Breakfast—an event that raises community awareness about efforts to advance inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace. We were one of a select number of organizations recognized for creating employment opportunities for people with disabilities in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this fourth and last installment of our blog series marking National Disability Employment Awareness Month (NDEAM), I’d like to share highlights from this special event.