Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Gather a group of social entrepreneurs to brainstorm ideas to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and you will harvest an array of innovative solutions. Share these ideas during a vibrant conversation with the number one champion in the Senate for people with disabilities, and you can count on a disability rights advocate who is prepared to mobilize support and resources to promote policies that will create an employment environment in which these cool innovations remain inspirational but become unremarkable. Recently, I had the pleasure to host Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) for exactly such a meeting of minds with ten fellow social entrepreneurs. I’m happy finally to get an opportunity to reflect here on that important event. Senator Harkin is a longtime advocate for people with disabilities. His signature legislative achievement is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. This landmark federal law, known as the “Emancipation Proclamation for people w...

Bookshare is doing great. Launching the new version of the website has been exciting, and I was happy to see a great blog post on the new capabilities from the National Braille Press' blog . We're also on a roll on many other fronts. We recently obtained the ability to directly download books from the national accessible textbook repository for those states who appoint us to do that for the disabled students of their state. Our staff are all over the country and the world spreading the word. While I was at the ATIA conference in Florida, our Director of Marketing was in Washington DC at another conference. Betsy Burgess got to run into Senator Harkin, who exclaimed "I love Bookshare!" For someone working in the disability field, hearing that (even secondhand!) from the number one disability advocate in the Senate was a thrill! But, it's not just in Washington DC. We have social enterprises all over the world doing book proofreading for Bookshare. One of o...