Education

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. It 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.

Last month, Benetech CEO, Jim Fruchterman, President Betsy Beaumon, and the Benetech Global Literacy team visited Washington, D.C., for briefings with senior leaders of the U.S. Department of Education. This included an “image slam”—a hands-on session in which they used our image description tool, Poet, to make digital images in a classic children’s book accessible. Since 2012, volunteers at image slams and other events have described nearly 45,000 digital images using Poet. This April, National Volunteer Month, we celebrate the wonderful volunteers who make a difference every day and help advance Benetech’s mission.

Rapid changes in the fields of consumer technology, education, and publishing make it possible to address the needs of the millions of people who face barriers of access to information. This includes individuals with print disabilities, such as those affected by learning differences, like dyslexia, or people with physical or visual disabilities. On the official blog of Disability.gov, Benetech President Betsy Beaumon writes about our Global Literacy Program and how it creates new and better opportunities for people with disabilities.

Betsy Beaumon’s Keynote Address at the 52nd Annual Learning Disabilities Association of America Conference Rapid advances in technology are remaking the content landscape and have made it possible to get more content, in more ways, to more people. Will the digital revolution usher in a golden age of access to books and information for people […]

We are delighted to share that USAID, World Vision, and the Australian Government awarded Benetech a 2015 grant to improve literacy for primary school students who are blind in India. The new grant, under the three partners’ All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development literacy innovations competition, funds our proposed winning project to provide Indian students who are blind with mother tongue instruction and reading materials through Bookshare, our digital library of accessible books.