Education

We have the technology today to end the book famine: we need your treaty to make it real! We look forward to a simple, straightforward and usable treaty that makes it possible for American blind people to have access to the cultural richness of all other languages and countries and for us to serve all of our hundreds of thousands of books to the blind of the world. Help us see that people with disabilities get the access they need for education, employment and full social inclusion!

Wired Magazine has quoted our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, in an about the negotiations for an international treaty to make books more accessible to people who are blind or have other print disabilities. Entitled “Obama Stops Championing Treaty That Gives the Blind Better Access to E-Books,” the article, written by David Kravets, outlines how lobbying by Hollywood and dozens of the world’s largest corporations may subvert the treaty, which has been years in the making.

Michael Yudin, Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) at the U.S. Department of Education, published a blog post entitled “Technology Gives Students with Disabilities Access to College Courses” about his recent visit to Mission Middle College in Santa Clara, California. During the visit, Mr. Yudin met with a group of Bookshare student members and observed a demonstration of how people use Bookshare.

This blog originally appeared in the Huffington Post and was reposted on Jim Fruchterman’s Beneblog. The Obama Administration is turning its back on people with disabilities–and I’m outraged. I’m an engineer and social entrepreneur, trying to make the world a better place for people with disabilities, and I rarely step into the role of vocal advocate. But when […]

Publishing Perspectives, the prestigious online journal of international publishing news and opinion, featured Benetech’s Bookshare library in a recent story called “Exploring Accessible Publishing for the Print Disabled.” The story also notes that Benetech shepherds forth “a mammoth five year R&D undertaking called DIAGRAM, which aims to educate publishers about how to make content fully accessible for everyone from the very beginning of the process,” and mentions Poet, a web-based, open source image description tool developed by DIAGRAM.