Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Schools are back in session, and with them millions of American children who struggle daily to learn using traditional printed books. Having learning disabilities or various learning differences, they need alternative reading environments that rely on their strengths rather than on their weaknesses. This includes accessible educational materials, such as e-books that can be used with computers, or mobile devices that display enlarged text or read the book aloud while also highlighting text. We have the technological innovations to help these children and their families and educators, who are looking for strategies to aid their success. Yet, we are still far from where we need to be in order to give them equal opportunity to succeed in school and beyond. In September 2007, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) selected our successful Bookshare library as the provider of accessible materials to every student in the U.S. with a legally qualifying pri...

One of the main reasons for attending TED is to get new ideas for Benetech and for the Raising the Floor movement. Although our efforts on RtF are mainly around serving people with disabilities, we are open to thinking more broadly about how these technologies could benefit more people. After all, that's the whole point of universal design ! I ran into a Stanford MBA student at TED, Joy Sun. She had been working in public health in Africa before heading to Stanford. I questioned her about how technology could help the health field, and she quickly came up with where she thought maximum leverage could be applied: helping those who are students in the health field get access to the content/textbooks they need. She described a nursing school in Luanda (I think, could have been Lusaka) that lacked textbooks or journals, and had weak PC infrastructure. But, all the students had cell phones. Bing! I see an immediate overlap with the work we're doing with Bookshare and a new c...