July 2012 - Bookshare Blog

Published July 30, 2012

Happy Birthday Read2Go!

This month, Read2Go, the popular accessible eBook reader for the Apple iOS, turns one year old. Happy birthday Read2Go! To celebrate, we are running a Read2Go Giveaway on Twitter and sharing our reflections over the past year. And what a year it has been. Since the launch of Read2Go in July of 2011, over 16,000 apps have been installed in 33 countries around the world! When we originally developed Read2Go with partner Shinano Kenshi Co., Ltd, the developer of the PLEXTALK brand of products, we knew we were building an innovative app that could help many people with print disabilities…

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Published July 26, 2012

My Google Summer of Code Experience with Benetech

Many thanks to Thushan Ganegedara for this post about his summer project. I’m Thushan Ganegedara, a 3rd year undergraduate from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. My interests are Mobile Development and Computational Intelligence. My first-ever experience with Google Summer of Code has been with Benetech. I have realized that Benetech is indeed “technology serving humanity.” I feel fortunate to work with a set of employees who are technically competent yet very friendly and helpful. My project is associated with the ‘Go Read’ Android application. Go Read is a free e-book reader that people…

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Published July 23, 2012

Meet the Bookshare In-House Summer Volunteer Team!

Bookshare is fortunate to have a variety of summer interns and volunteers working in our Palo Alto office this year. Our main focus has been our text book image description project. Our summer volunteers write text book image descriptions, review and revise descriptions, provide technical assistance, and proofread children’s books with new image descriptions. We’re especially grateful for the participation of two blind Bookshare members, who have provided input on how to write the best image descriptions. Volunteers have also helped us prepare for the ACB and NFB summer conferences, and contributed to our marketing, collection development, and international departments. …

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Published July 18, 2012

Non-English Accents in Braille

A guest post from a member of the Bookshare Collection Development team and a Bookshare Member, Liz Halperin. Ever wonder how braille handles non-English accent marks? Things like umlauts or tildes or other accent marks from Spanish, French, German, Danish, Polish, and so on? Remember, in braille, everything happens with just 6 dots (or 8 dots for digital or computer braille) in a group. (See other resources about basic braille structure of dots and cells, uncontracted and contracted braille, etc.) So how can braille indicate there is an accent mark over the e in the French word café or the…

Bookshare Members’ Enthusiastic Comments

A post from Jim Fruchterman, CEO of Benetech Every week our Bookshare team hears from our Members. I am thrilled to get copied on these emails: it reminds me of why we do here at Benetech! I appreciate that so many of our Members take the time to write and thank our team. Changes often inspire Members to write and it is so helpful to hear about what works (and what doesn’t work so we can fix it). The recent upgrades in our Bookshare site and service such as the new audio formats, images, and image descriptions motivated several Members…

Planning a Trip with Bookshare

The communication below from Bookshare member Gayle Yarnall, recently retired from The Perkins School for the Blind, inspired a blog about planning a trip with Bookshare. A year ago, almost exactly, we booked tickets for a retirement trip to Paris, and six months after that we booked an apartment through VRBO.com. Now it was up to me to plan the trip. For me, one of the best things about planning a trip is reading all I can about where I am going. You could read books about Paris, by Paris writers and about people who wrote about Paris for the…