Avid reader Annette Moore, a relatively new Bookshare adult member, says Bookshelf helps her organize and track her favorite genres and keep them at the “top of her mind.” Annette has lots of diverse reading interests! “In addition to Christian fiction and romance, I like historical journals, books written in letter format, biographies, and I am a huge weather buff,” she said. “Bookshelf helps me categorize the books I want to read fast!” One of the books on Annette’s Bookshelf is called Letters Home to Sarah, a compilation of letters from a gentleman in the Civil War written to his…
Leave a CommentCategory: Bookshare Product News
Product related news – updates on releases, outages, and upcoming features
Web Reader Screen Shortcuts and Educator Tips
The Bookshare Web Reader makes it easy to preview or read Bookshare books because you don’t need to download and unzip them. It’s a quick way to preview a book or read it in its entirety. Below are some shortcuts. Do you use a screen reader? You can use your screen reader with Internet Explorer 9, Safari, or a recent version of Firefox to read with Bookshare Web Reader. To start, find a book, then select the “Read Now” link. Expect to hear an announcement saying that your book is being packaged. Once complete, Bookshare Web Reader will open, and the…
Leave a CommentMy 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…
2 CommentsGoogle Selected Benetech for Google Summer of Code
Students to Contribute to Development of Go Read Every summer, Google sponsors “Google Summer of Code” (GSoC) which offers stipends to postsecondary student developers and pairs them with open source mentoring organizations. Given Google’s high engineering standards, selection as a mentoring organization is a great honor! This year, Benetech was awarded three, top-notch students and is asking them to work on Go Read development projects. Go Read is a free, open source, accessible e-book reader for Android phones and tablets. Currently optimized for visually-impaired readers (and usable by anyone), Go Read allows readers to enjoy Bookshare books whenever and wherever…
Leave a CommentFurthering Accessibility of Graphs at the International Space Apps Challenge
Over the weekend of April 21 and 22, two engineers from the Bookshare team, Gerardo Capiel and Rom Srinivasan, participated in the International Space Apps Challenge, a two-day event designed to bring citizens from around the world together to solve challenges relevant to spatial exploration and social need. It’s a “code-a-thon” weekend – a technology development marathon – with engineers on all seven continents and in space volunteering their time, collaborating on solutions to interesting problems. The Bookshare team contributed one of the challenges for the weekend: to continue development of MathTrax, an open source graphing application developed by NASA…
Leave a CommentAssistive Technology Spotlight – Texthelp Apps
We are happy to feature innovative new assistive technologies in this blog. Today, we want to tell you about a Web App from Texthelp, eBook Reader, that reads Bookshare books in the Cloud. eBook Reader is one of a new suite of Web Apps that work within browsers on iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, and other mobile devices as well as PCs and Macs. A short video shows how the eBook Reader works. Current Apps include: Read&Write Web, eBook Reader for Bookshare® eBooks, Speech, and Dictionary. Students in schools and colleges who use Read&Write GOLD can use these Apps at school…
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