Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

The Year That Was and the New Year Ahead  Guest Beneblog by Betsy Beaumon, Benetech's VP and General Manager of the Literacy Program 2012 was a year of titanic shifts in the fields of consumer technology, education, and publishing, along with the requisite challenges brought about by such rapid change. At Benetech, where innovation is the engine behind our mission, we did our best to make the most of it and help lead the charge into the future. Bookshare and our other Access to Literacy initiatives, including the DIAGRAM Center and Route 66 Literacy, all made big strides this year through the significant dedication of the community that makes it all happen. We celebrated the tenth anniversary of Bookshare—both online and with in real life—with gatherings of users, volunteers, partners, employees, and friends throughout the year. As we get older, some of us like to increase the length and number of celebrations for our own birthdays, so why not apply this to Bookshare too? Af...

Benetech has long been a pioneer in providing innovative services to people with print disabilities. This week, Benetech’s DIAGRAM Center has announced the release of an open source web application for creating and editing crowdsourced image descriptions in books used by students with print disabilities. The Poet application developed by DIAGRAM helps level the playing field by making otherwise inaccessible graphic content available for students and other readers who cannot read traditional books. Poet supports image descriptions for electronic books created in the international DAISY standard for digital talking books and will be compatible with descriptions for ebooks in the EPUB3 format. The DIAGRAM Center team has also created an image data content model which will provide standards to define and enhance the efficacy and interoperability of accessible images as the project evolves. DIAGRAM stands for Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials. Our DIAGRAM ...

The annual observance of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) is today, December 3rd. The Day aims to raise awareness of disability issues with a focus on the rights of persons with disabilities and the benefits derived from their integration in the social, economic, cultural and political life of their communities. People with disabilities make up an estimated 15% of the world’s population of 7 billion, and they remain largely marginalized and affected by discrimination and unemployment, among other significant difficulties. The theme of IDPD 2011 is “Together for a better world for all: Including persons with disabilities in development.” This year, for the first time, IDPD is commemorated with supporting sub-themes (see the full list here ), to draw attention to key issues that come into play in the intersection of disability and development processes. One of these sub-themes is “Accessibility: removing barriers and promoting disability-inclusive development.” O...

Just before the holidays, we had a great visit from Tracy R. Justesen, Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services . Tracy's brief at the U.S. Department of Education includes overseeing OSEP, the people who are funding our Bookshare for Education project to serve every student with a print disability in the United States. Tracy's visit really gave our team a chance to shine. John Glass demonstrated the new version of Victor Reader Soft from HumanWare, one of our key access technology partners. John Crossman demonstrated the completely new version of the Bookshare on-line library, which is currently in the first round of beta tests. Paddy Sullivan, part of our membership team, volunteered to demonstrate the new version of Don Johnston's Read:OutLoud software, which will be available once we launch the new site. Carrie Karnos gave the demonstration to Tracy and Margaret Romer (also from Department of Ed) of the ever-popular book mangler, I mean,...

Bookshare.org hits 35,000 Books! It's always exciting when we hit another milestone like this. The milestones are going to be coming ever faster, now that we have the Bookshare.org for Education project (funded by the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S. Department of Education). We're committed to increasing our rate of title growth by a factor of four or five while improving quality. Mr. Jim and Ms. Lisa go to Washington Lisa Friendly and I just spent a fascinating week in Washington. Apparently, winning a competition for the largest award made by OSEP in memory (ever?) caused quite a stir. Although we are well known in the national and international disability field, it's been about ten years since I spent much time in DC (last time was the original Section 508 federal advisory committee in the 90s). We need to now spend a lot more time acquainting Washington decision makers about why OSEP made an inspired choice in selecting Bookshare.org as the provid...