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One of their main challenges is that they do not have adequate access to educational materials that are necessary to learn and succeed in school. Accessibleebooks and Bookshare have helped sixth grader Kevin Leong overcome his reading challenges.
This is totally the “how sausage and law are made” view, so don’t read this unless you want to know more about global accessibility in detail! WIPO has a mandate from its member states, and is working to address the need to change laws and get more accessible books flowing.
Plenary Talk at the Eighth General Assembly of the World Blind Union Access to published information is an essential requirement for education, employment and full social inclusion. People with vision impairments and other print disabilities deserve equal access to that treasure of information.
Next month, I will be heading to TOC a couple of days early in order to participate in a W3C Workshop on eBooks and the Open Web Platform, where I will be talking about Social DRM (Digital Rights Management). However, strong DRM turns out to be an impediment to the commercial distribution of accessibleebooks. See you there!
Last September, I wrote a Beneblog post: Objecting to Accessibility Weaseling , about Amazon and other ebook reader makers trying to dodge out on making their devices accessible. The refusal to grant an indefinite waiver is a big deal, because it will keep accessibility on the agenda. This is an update on that fight.
We take their files and convert them to the DAISY format which is a digital format designed specifically to create accessible materials for people with print disabilities. We're excited about this trend and the opportunities it creates for the commercial availability of mass market accessible books. Why is this a big deal?
Last week, the National Federation of the Blind and 22 organizations serving people with disabilities filed detailed objections to a petition from a group of makers of e-reader devices led by Amazon to be exempted from accessibility requirements under the relatively new Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.
And when the idea of a peer-to-peer ebook library came to me, it was George who I went to with the idea. After talking me out of calling it Bookster, he explained how the DAISY format would be ideal for our new Bookshare project, that he had made sure that it would work well for ebooks like the ones we were hoping to provide.
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. DIAGRAM stands for Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials.
Summer is a great time to explore Candid’s collection of free eBooks and audiobooks for titles that can help you achieve your goals as a nonprofit professional. Here are nine free eBooks to check out for inspiration. Browse our collection of free eBooks and audiobooks on nonprofit leadership, fundraising, and related topics.
Gerardo’s contributions related to the Benetech Global Literacy Program include: Overseeing the building of the tech infrastructure that has taken Bookshare from serving tens of thousands of members to over 300,000 members, with a rapidly growing collection of 280,000+ accessibleebooks.
We provide accessibleebooks that can be spoken aloud, turned into Braille or large print. Ironically, many of these users might buy commercial ebooks, but the anti-piracy technology built into many ebook systems are not compatible with the technology these users employ to get the books in Braille or synthetic speech.
Brief Comments on Accessibility Concerns on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) The disability community should be concerned about ACTA for two reasons: At its core it’s an anti-piracy agreement. The digital measures designed to defeat piracy usually end up equating accessibility with piracy.
But, it's a dream that the commercial ebook vendors keep dashing. And that is setting back the cause of people with disabilities who need that kind of access. We have an action by Amazon that sets back years of work to make ebooksaccessible. A recent example of this was web site accessibility. Roy Blount Jr.
I think it’s time to write a series of short essays on the struggle for accessible books, starting with this brouhaha. In it, we pointed out the irony that the first generation of ebook readers being inaccessible to blind people. Ebooks on PCs have had text-to-speech capabilities for years (although not always enabled).
People with print disabilities around the world have a right to high-quality ebooks that they can read with assistive technology. Benetech’s Bookshare library continues to expand its international service providing accessible books and publications to members in more than 30 countries.
You can also download his new, and free, eBook , Trusted Leadership Advisor , when you subscribe for free to his website. This week, Nathan kindly shared more about his eBook and leadership in general. What inspired you to write the ebook? Who is your target reader for the ebook? Do you have another ebook in the works?
“They get frustrated and don’t want to read,” she says, “but access to digital books and reading technologies changed all that for Zach.” With Bookshare’s accessibleebooks and reading tools, Zach made a successful transition to college. I don’t wait for my books for new classes; I search the library and find them myself.”
Why Circumvention for the Purposes of Access is Crucial A Bookshare Briefing Paper Prepared for the Diplomatic Conference for Visually Impaired Persons The distributors of digital content often use technological protection measures (TPMs) to discourage the making of unauthorized copies.
It became a burden to his family and caregivers to constantly drop what they were doing to turn a page, so he began seeking out ebooks. This reality changed when Frank found out about Benetech’s Bookshare accessible digital library for people with print disabilities. To continue this work, we depend on the support of generous donors.
The goal of the DIAGRAM R&D Center is to greatly improve access to graphical information for students with print disabilities (for example, helping blind students get access to important graphics inside textbooks). We are also building a content model for making images more accessible.
The first issue is that the treaty would not permit direct access by consumers to international authorized entities. Everyone who is not disabled globally can directly access Amazon.com and order books. Being silent on the big issue of circumvention would lead to a world where accessibility could be prohibited by contract.
Born Accessible: Working with publishers to ensure that any new ebook is accessible to people who read differently - with the goal of one day making Bookshare obsolete. Senate and goes into effect this month. When Benetech began, we didn’t know of any other tech for good social enterprise.
Creating the World’s Largest Collection of Accessible Arabic eBooksAccess to knowledge is the critical first step on the path to economic, educational, and social development. In 2011, we began collaborating with the Mada Center (Qatar Assistive Technology Center) to create accessible Arabic-language digital books.
Humble Bundle is an online store that sells games, ebooks, and software. It’s highly likely that nonprofits using Facebook Fundraising Tools will get first access to the new Instagram Donation Stickers. To get access to the tools, your nonprofit must have a Google for Nonprofits account. Humble Bundle :: humblebundle.com.
Gerardo Capiel, Benetech's VP Engineering, just sent me a couple of exciting screen shots on our Read2Go iOS application for accessible reading of ebooks. The first one shows the Special Education category on iTunes, with the Read2Go logo being used to represent the Literacy and Learning section.
The DDD student staff people work half days at DDD, proofing textbooks to make them accessible to students with print disabilities. Our partners proofread the text, fixing mistakes and adding accessibility, and ship us the files back to add to our Bookshare library. We scan the books in the U.S.,
I’m thrilled to share with you some of the recent amazing impact of Bookshare , a Benetech Global Literacy initiative and the largest accessible online library of copyrighted content for people with print disabilities. a11y accessibility Bookshare Braille DAISY ebooks Global Literacy print disabilities Reading'
Along with access to the latest version, ChatGPT 4 Turbo, which is the most intelligent model available at the time of writing, it also provides access to an array of additional tools. To get started, download NFPs.AI’s Introduction to AI for Nonprofits eBook. The ChatGPT Plus Plan offers immense value.
One of these sub-themes is “Accessibility: removing barriers and promoting disability-inclusive development.” Of course, accessibility is right up Benetech’s alley and the focus of our Literacy program. Thousands of ebooks pour into the library from over 168 publishers and textbook requests are fulfilled every month.
Including the link for your livestream or video(s) in an Event Page makes it easy for donors to find and watch after your live event and remains easy to access for days, weeks, months to come without getting lost in the social media algorithm. Wondering what to say and do during your virtual fundraising event?
have been asking about the Treaty of Marrakesh (formal name: The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities. Ultimately, this community should have equal access to all of the books that are needed for education, employment and social inclusion.
Bookshare: Solving the “Accessible Book Famine” Twelve years ago, we had an idea for recreating the traditional library for people with print disabilities—such as those who are blind, cannot physically turn the pages of a book, or have learning disabilities, like dyslexia—using the then-emerging technologies of digital books and crowdsourcing.
The nonprofit Benetech team built the revolutionary Bookshare library for this community, all online, and based on the powerfully flexible ebook. You can take an ebook, push a button and make it Braille. This results in an ebook, which can be shared by Bookshare legally with many thousands of other disabled readers.
By partnering with all these stakeholders, we reinvented the traditional library for people with print disabilities and brought modern ebook technology to this underserved community. We blew up the old approaches to converting inaccessible books into accessible equivalents.
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. After all, in the world of eBooks, ten years is pretty old! Thanks again! We’ve added over 1800 books since then.
However, she soon encountered the frustrating “accessible book famine” because very few books available were available in Braille. This reality changed when both Kevin and Sophia learned about the accessible online library Bookshare , an initiative of Silicon Valley technology nonprofit Benetech. Data is now a core resource.
The deal was: help people with disabilities that can't access books and don't hurt the economic interests of the publishers (and authors). Ensure that only people with qualifying disabilities get access to these books. At Benetech, our commitment is to uphold that social deal. How do we uphold the social bargain?
Betsy Beaumon, Benetech VP and General Manager of Bookshare During the event, our Bookshare staff offered demos of our Bookshare library and our Go Read accessibleebook reader for Android. Raman of Google Research, a long-time Bookshare member and advisor, was on hand to help us celebrate last night.
Here are seven titles from Candid’s free collection of eBooks and audiobooks that offer guidance on how to make a difference through volunteering, career choices, and intentional daily actions. To get started, see How can I access Candid’s eBook collection? Looking to get involved with a nonprofit?
Twelve years ago, the Fund made its first grant to Benetech, in support of the then newly launched Bookshare , our accessible online library for people with disabilities that get in the way of reading print, including visual impairments and dyslexia. This pilot paved the way for our work in the education field.
The goal of the Treaty is to make a copyright exception for the blind and other people with disabilities that stop them from reading print, and to make import and export of accessible content legal. My core point: Don’t put up bureaucratic barriers to access. The biggest challenge for access is that it’s expensive.
As the debate rages about the accessibility of ebooks, it's good to know that most publishers are committed to seeing their works reach people with print disabilities. We're delighted to be working with these top university presses to meet this crucial need through Bookshare.
Resources Deluxe – their blog, ebooks, help docs, and design trends are seriously useful and well designed resources that any nonprofit marketing team should check out. . Pantheon dashboard which provides easy access to each staging site, along with Git commits. Keep in mind that only includes access to G Suite Basic.
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