Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

One of the joys of my role is meeting other social sector leaders: people with a powerful passion for good.  We learn from each other, and try to help each other when we can.  Jamila Hassoune Ten years ago, I started corresponding with a fascinating woman from Morocco, Jamila Hassoune.  Over time, I learned more and more about her work and background.  She was the first woman bookseller in Morocco.  Her love for books led her to create the Book Caravans: treks each April out to a village in the desert or the mountains of Morocco.  She would bring books especially for children and women, and conduct a couple of days of workshops on wide-ranging topics about enterprise, culture, history, poetry and books. Over the time I corresponded with Jamila by email, she started becoming better known in Europe.  One Italian book was written about her entitled the "La libraia di Marrakech," the Librarian of Marrakesh. Last year, I was able to meet Jamila i...

I’ve been actively advocating for an international copyright exception model that would greatly benefit people with disabilities, as anyone who has read my blog over the years can attest! My passion at Benetech for the last twenty-five years has been making technology tools to meet the reading needs of people who are blind, dyslexic or have other print disabilities. After all, Benetech’s Bookshare initiative is the largest online library serving people with print disabilities in the world.  We help more than 250,000 people with print disabilities thanks to our U.S. copyright exception. We could serve many more with a comparable international model. Diplomatic leaders gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco Last month, leaders from around the world gathered in Marrakesh, Morocco, with the hope of taking a huge step forward and designing that international model. I’m excited to report: they did just that. The “ Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Wh...

Guest Beneblog by  Betsy Beaumon, VP and General Manager, Benetech’s Global Literacy Program. Betsy Beaumon 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 landmark meeting brought together braille experts from around the world to Perkins’ campus in Watertown, Massachusetts. My biggest takeaway from the summit: the time could not be more urgent, and more hopeful, for the future of braille and the prospects of those who need it. That’s why braille is an important focus for us in Benetech’s Global Literacy Program — we know that we must keep braille relevant and make it more available. One of the biggest reasons is that among people who are blind, braille literacy has been linked with higher education levels, higher likelihood of employment and higher income. Accor...

To the Diplomatic Conference in Plenary on  June 27, 2013 On the Adoption of the Treaty of Marrakech 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! At Benetech , we like to think of ourselves as part of Silicon Valley’s heart. We are a high tech organization that is not organized as a for-profit company, but instead as a nonprofit charitable corporation working to ensure technology serves all of humanity. Our goal is not to make money for private interests, but instead to use technology to maximize social good. For years, we have been working to end the worldwide book famine. This Treaty provides a tremendous tool to accelerate that work. It is our hope that Benetech’s Bookshare library, the a...

Benetech, my nonprofit organization operates Bookshare, the largest online library dedicated to serving blind and print disabled people. We have 197,000 books available in the United States today, and serve 250,000 people , mainly in the United States, but also in 40 other countries. Our library is made possible both by a domestic copyright exception that makes it possible for us to add any book requested by a blind person to our library, as well as strong cooperation with publishers who provide many of their books directly to our library for free, including the rights to serve people in certain other countries. Our library is unusual, in that our charter is to serve all people with print disabilities of the world, not just those in our country. Our focus is on carefully vetting each person as having a qualified print disability through working with trustworthy institutions in our own and other countries, and then letting qualified users loose in a library without limits! And, j...