Over the past three months, we’ve had the pleasure of working with three very talented students as a part of Google Summer of Code 2013. This is our second consecutive summer partnering with this amazing global program, which offers student developers stipends to write code for open source software projects. What’s so great about the program is that not only do the students get to work on real world, open source software development with a mentor, but the projects that participate benefit greatly from the new talent, ideas and collaboration. This summer, our students have been working on three pretty cool projects, contributing code that extends the functionality of tools and capabilities we provide as part of our Bookshare initiative.
As accessible materials increasingly become more available, we must ensure that users can easily discover this accessible content. It’s time to elevate the discussion about the importance of the discoverability of accessible materials. Help us make sure our panel is part of SXSW 2014! Go to the SXSW PanelPicker and vote for Discovering Accessible Learning Resources. PanelPicker closes tomorrow, Friday, September 6, so please VOTE NOW.
Here in the United States, our Bookshare initiative is having a tremendous impact, especially on the lives of students. We now provide over 200,000 accessible books to more than a quarter-million people who are blind, dyslexic or have other print disabilities. And yet, while we’ve made significant progress in the U.S., we’ve only scratched the surface of meeting the global need. The sad truth is that there are millions of people with print disabilities around the world that continue to be left behind.
This piece originally appeared as a guest post on Jim Fruchterman’s Blog. 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. With the goal of promoting braille literacy, this […]
This is an excellent Treaty. The Benetech team is delighted by its adoption today. We have the technology, we have the content, and now we have the legal framework to make it possible for every person with a print disability on the planet to get access to the books they need for education, employment and social inclusion!
