Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Brownbag lunches are a regular feature at Benetech, and one of our most popular regular speakers is Bookshare team member Liz Halperin. Liz had just gotten back from getting her new guide dog, Welton. She told an enthralled audience all about the ten stages of guide dog training and the process of being matched up with a dog. Her prior guide dog had not been all that successful and she had to switch after just two years (5-9 being more typical for the length of guiding service). The highlight of the talk was when she took the apparently mellow Wellie off his harness and then he dashed around the room to be petted by 30-40 people. The funniest thing was her description of her prior dog's love of eating paper: the dog actually ate her Benetech paycheck. Our CFO, Teresa Throckmorton, explained that she switched Liz to being paid by wire transfers. As a dog owner, I know that they can sometimes chew through money, but this was ridiculous!

I just got an email from the incredible Liz Halperin . She's one of our Bookshare team members and also happens to be deaf and blind. She shoots me me very interesting ideas frequently, and I thought I'd share this one with my blog readers. I can't quite figure out how to make it, but I bet someone will!! Hi Jim, Busy, busy man. But I'm intruding because you are "intrude-able" and I have a dream. Like all good science fiction, it starts as a dream, and then somehow becomes real. You have blogged about various funders looking for those "great leaps of imagination", that if created, could make a huge benefit to people. My idea has likely been floated already, I have no idea. But it's tech-time sci fi. I imagine I have a small, lightweight box or sphere or flat case like a woman's cosmetic compact in my rear jeans/slacks pocket , purse/briefcase or backpack. I stand in front of a building and pull out the item, and push a button on it or giv...

An Insider Reveals How the Latest Hot Books Are Added to Bookshare’s Collection of Accessible Titles A Guest Beneblog by Liz Halperin After working for many years as a volunteer for Bookshare, I became a paid proofreader for the collection about two years ago. I now review books that are scanned and uploaded in formats that can be read using different forms of assistive technology such as text-to-speech, digital Braille or enlarged fonts. Most of the books I work with are books requested by students and titles from the New York Times (NYT) bestsellers list. Last spring, I had a chance to visit “The Mother Ship,” Bookshare’s main office at the Palo Alto, California headquarters of Benetech, Bookshare’s parent nonprofit. While I was there, I discovered how the NYT bestsellers make it into the collection. I used to think that publishers just sent electronic copies to Bookshare. Wrong. While publishers do donate thousands of digital texts to Bookshare, the NYT bestsellers are added to the ...