Against the Grain, an online magazine focused on the issues, literature and people that impact the world of books and journals, quoted Betsy Beaumon, VP and General Manager of our Global Literacy Program, in an article titled The Challenge of Accessibility & New Media. In a section titled “Ending the Book Famine,” the article quotes Betsy on the future of reading and education for people with disabilities.
Please help us give the gift of reading to veterans with print disabilities by supporting our Bookshare for Veterans crowdfunding campaign on CrowdRise. Our goal is to extend Bookshare services to our veterans and provide them with access to the books they need for education, employment and inclusion in society. To support this, we just launched a crowdfunding campaign as part of the Skoll Foundation’s Social Entrepreneurs Challenge on CrowdRise. The Challenge is an 8-week campaign geared towards helping the world’s leading social enterprises raise money, awareness and resources for their causes. Join us! Support our Challenge—Benetech’s Bookshare for Veterans. Because everyone deserves the right to read.
My name is Jordan Gould and I am from Brantford, Ontario, Canada, a town about an hour south of Toronto. I am currently in my second year of Computer Science at The University of Western Ontario. I found the Benetech projects interesting because I am a person with low vision and have in the past used DAISY formatted books on CD with a specialized CD player. Since smartphones and tablets are more ubiquitous now, I believe that contributing to Go Read can help expand access and usability of DAISY books in an academic environment.
I am Yashasvi Girdhar. I am a Junior majoring in Computer Science at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. I was introduced to Benetech when applying for a Google Summer of Code internship. I was really impressed by Benetech’s cause to support and serve society through the use of technology and am grateful to be given an opportunity to contribute to it.
Bookshare Web Reader allows Bookshare members to directly open and read Bookshare eBooks with a Web browser, without having to download any files or use additional software reading tools. It enables users to adjust font size, colors and display format, and takes advantage of new and exciting features in the Google Chrome browser, which allow users to read books multi-modally, with word-by-word highlighting and text-to-speech. Web Reader saves time and effort…and delivers a great reading experience. All a user has to do is find the book s/he is interested in, select “Read Now” and read it instantly in their browser.
