10X: ten times the impact. That’s what’s been on my mind lately. How can our existing successful programs reach ten times more people? 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? At Benetech, we want to help lead the charge into a future where the advantages of digital information touch the lives of all people, not just of the richest and most able five percent of humanity. As always, I’m delighted to share the latest Benetech highlights as we work on these ambitious 10X dreams!
Two days ago, on Tuesday, June 10, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York made a major ruling that emphasizes the legality of fair use for book digitization. In Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, a unanimous three-judge panel concluded that digitizing books in order to enhance research and provide access to individuals with print disabilities is lawful on the grounds of fair use (Section 107 of the U.S. copyright law). This is an immense victory for fair use as the basis of a balanced intellectual property system, and we, at Benetech, are delighted by it and by its tremendous positive implications for the public interest.
At Benetech, we believe that as accessible digital content and applications increasingly become more available, they must also be easily discoverable. That’s exactly what we set out to do through the Accessibility Metadata Project, one of our Benetech Labs projects. We have recently completed the project and I’m delighted to say that we accomplished all these goals and more!
Today, May 15 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day—a day intended to get people talking, thinking, and learning about digital accessibility for people with disabilities. This is an opportunity to share what Benetech’s DIAGRAM Center is doing to ensure that digital content is accessible to all. The DIAGRAM Center is working at the frontier of accessible publishing and online content by making it easier, faster, and cheaper to create and use accessible digital images. One of the many emerging technologies we are researching is 3D printing for accessible educational materials.
Did you know that April is National Volunteer Month? We’d like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank Benetech’s fantastic community of dedicated volunteers who amplify the positive impact we make in the lives of our beneficiaries. In this post, we’ll highlight the wonderful contributions of our student volunteers from Brigham Young University, who regularly meet to describe Bookshare textbook images, as well as the impact created through our SocialCoding4Good initiative that operates at the hub of technology-for-good volunteer engagement.
