Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 9, 2013

Random House Mondadori and Expanding the Spanish-language Bookshare Program Benetech’s strong relationships with numerous partners across sectors are fundamental to our continued success. Penguin, he points out, is a growing power in China, India and Brazil, while Random House is pervasive across Spanish-speaking Latin America.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 7, 2013

However, as the founder of the Bookshare online library, we have a great deal at stake in how the Treaty gets implemented. Plus, it will especially help countries with less-developed libraries and services for people with disabilities by making it easier to tap large collections (like Bookshare) in other countries. Articles 5 and 6.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 18, 2008

The main reason for my visit to South India was the National Seminar on Print Access For All, which was organized by the dynamic Mr. Krishnaswamy. He's really helped us move forward with our India projects, thanks to our India project manager, Viji Dilip, who joined me there and who has made all of these great Chennai connections for us.

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Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 3, 2010

Note from Beth: During my trip to India in February, I was introduced to a nonprofit children's book publisher in India, Pratham Books. “It was set up to fill a gap in the market for good quality, reasonably priced children’s books in a variety of Indian languages. India has a reading problem and the problem is two fold.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

There was also an associated effort called the Trusted Intermediary Global Accessible Resources (TIGAR) project, to ease the exchange of accessible book files between libraries for the blind and print disabled. My biggest argument was the “library with holes” problem. The view of the World Blind Union was that the rightsholders (i.e.,

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 27, 2008

The Times of India covered the story during my visit, Disabled in city help blind in US. Plus, as we get more permissions from India publishers, we'll be able to source English language books locally. And, hopefully in the future we'll be able to do books in Indian languages like Hindi and Tamil (and many others, of course).

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Tech Soup

SEPTEMBER 18, 2012

When we surveyed NGOs and libraries around the world this year about where they are in regard to using and needing cloud based IT services, we didn’t know how far things have gone toward cloud adoption. to conduct our survey in 21 languages. The survey was fielded in February and March 2012. What Didn't Surprise Me.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 8, 2010

I would class this as TVI (nearly identical) plus additional provisions creating a similar exception for schools, libraries and archives. Right now, it’s not in great shape: • No global exception norm, but voluntary agreement by rightsholders (that’s today’s status quo), with model agreements that are terrible from the nonprofit/library side.

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Tech Soup

APRIL 19, 2012

TechSoup’s Refurbished Computer Initiative (RCI) has provided warrantied refurbished computers and other IT devices to nonprofits and libraries for seven years now. It made us think about ways we could bring good dependable low-cost computers to nonprofits and libraries. There were no costs incurred by Microsoft for the donation.

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Tech Soup

SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

Malhan’s approach to developing accessibility is informed by his experience in a developing country, namely India, where advanced technologies, like smartphones, are not as readily available or affordable. According to Malhan, the biggest challenge in the developing world for the disabled is a lack access to resources and information.

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Tech Soup

JANUARY 15, 2013

We need solutions that address security concerns in language organizations can recognize. Lots of NGOs in places like India don't yet even have broadband or adequate IT equipment and we conducted our survey via the Internet using the online service, FluidSurveys. Here are two more things that surprised and puzzled us in our survey.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 7, 2013

Bookshare International Library We’re always thinking about new ways in which Benetech could go deeper and help many more people. Bookshare , our flagship literacy program, is the world’s largest accessible library and currently serves more than 230,000 members with visual and learning disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 14, 2009

Of course, my pragmatic view is that many, many people can simply order books from the UK or India today over the Internet, and I didn't see a reason to deny a person in the developing world a book they need when the publisher didn't bother to publish the book in that country.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

I have good news: For $5 million a year, we can build a global library that provides tens of millions of people around the world who are blind, low vision, or dyslexic free access to books that will work for them. Our Bookshare library has over 550,000 books that have been delivered digitally over 10 million times. This one does.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

Libraries for people who are blind or dyslexic are the primary source of accessible books in audio, large print or braille. But, some companies want to empty the library shelves and insist that only books that can’t be purchased are allowed to be stocked in such libraries. Bookshare was created under the Section 121 U.S.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 28, 2014

I explained Benetech’s efforts to grow the impact of our Bookshare library globally, specifically discussing partnerships with groups in India and Kenya. Of course, we’d have to focus on local language content. While English might be very useful in Nairobi, Swahili would be the language needed in rural Kenya.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 16, 2011

Canada, Europe and India. Bookshare now has hundreds of titles in Hindi, Tamil, and Spanish, and we recently announced a partnership with the government of Qatar to develop an Arabic language service. Bookshare has successfully piloted an international library for the blind, but we’ve barely begun to remedy the global book famine.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 7, 2013

Our Bookshare library is allowed to scan just about any book needed by a person who is blind or print-disabled: we now have 190,000 of the most in-demand books and textbooks needed in accessible forms like braille, large print, and audio output. That''s what the MPAA calls "balance?" under a Treaty. under a Treaty. Which leads to #3.

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Tech Soup

MAY 14, 2014

Nonprofits, faith-based organizations, libraries, and networks such as the NetSquared Local should be leading this movement as they are already committed to social good. We should also pause and note t he tech sector’s troubling tendency to turn inward while adopting the language of the public square and the commons.

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