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Month: March 2012

Published March 27, 2012

Volunteer for Exciting New Image Description Project!

A cutting-edge image description project is underway at Bookshare. Funded by the Leveraging Impact through Technology (LIT) award from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, this pilot project uses Poet, an open-source, crowd-sourcing image description tool developed by the DIAGRAM Center, another OSEP-funded project operated by Benetech and its partners. This innovative pilot project needs volunteers. Poet makes it easy to create accessible image descriptions and add them to DAISY books. Volunteer describers log into a website, select the book they are working on, see its images, and enter descriptions for the images in the appropriate…

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Published March 20, 2012

Bookshare Mentor Teachers and Local Experts Bring Reading Alive

Did you know that Bookshare has a very active program of over 360 Mentor Teachers and 30 Local Experts? This dedicated group of volunteers gives their time to bring reading alive for students with print disabilities in their schools and districts. Mentor Teachers provide resources and training for other teachers, parents and students. For example, some Mentors facilitate group and one-on-one trainings with teachers, parents and students on anything related to Bookshare.  Others have developed online training tools and video tutorials, conducted in-service professional development, and worked with school and district leadership to get Bookshare implemented. Many participate in a listserv…

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Published March 15, 2012

A Teen with Dyslexia Describes Benefits of Reading with Technology

A guest post by Brian Meersma, a student member of the Bookshare Advisory Board I am a high school sophomore with dyslexia. I was diagnosed at a young age, but was always eager to learn new things.  Because I had trouble reading, my parents and grandparents would read to me for hours. I loved listening to all the great books they read to me and I knew there was no way I was able to read those books on my own.  What I realized was that I had great listening skills.  I got so much more out of books when…

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Published March 12, 2012

Join Bookshare’s Worldwide 10th Anniversary Celebration!

Yes, Bookshare is now 10 years old, and we invite you to join a virtual worldwide celebration! For a decade, we’ve been bringing reading to life for people with print disabilities, and we’ve been bringing reading to the lives of many who were hungry for access to content, be it for school or reading pleasure. We’ve accomplished this by knocking down barriers to access, collaborating with great partners, and inventing new, easy-to-use technologies. We pioneered a new approach to libraries for individuals with print disabilities and we let Members decide what they wanted to add to the collection. To remind…

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Published March 8, 2012

A New Way to Think about Assistive Technology

Glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, canes, walkers are all devices that help a person do something better than he/she could without them. We don’t usually think of these aids as “assistive technologies,” but they certainly assist with a better quality of life and more independent living. The term assistive technology usually refers to tools or devices used by a person with a disability. For example, a person who is blind or visually impaired can use devices like digital talking book players that read books aloud at the press of a button. Other devices display refreshable braille. These tactile devices have…

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