Volunteers Archives - Page 2 of 3

Published December 19, 2013

Bookshare Listed Among World’s 100 Most Inspiring Applications of Digital Technology for Social Innovation

This post is reposted from the Benetech Blog. The Nominet Trust, a United Kingdom leading social tech funder, included Bookshare, a Benetech Global Literacy initiative, on its list of 100 global ventures using digital technology to solve some of the world’s biggest social problems. Through its innovative technologies, Bookshare is raising the floor for people with print disabilities (such as visual impairments, physical disabilities, or severe learning disabilities) by providing them with the world’s largest collection of accessible copyrighted content and reading tools. Bookshare currently has over 250,000 members and a collection of more than 220,000 titles, which are delivered…

White Cane Awareness Walk 2013: National Disability Employment Awareness Month

The Bookshare staff would like to share highlights from the Palo Alto White Cane Awareness Walk, in which we participated on Wednesday, October 16th in honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. This blog was originally published on the Benetech website. This annual event is held each October on or in proximity to White Cane Safety Day, a national observance celebrating the ability of people with impaired vision to lead independent lives. With the white cane as a symbol of their independence, the Awareness Walk is open to all: white cane users, support cane users, human guides, walker users, power mobility users,…

New Partnership with Lions Club International

With great pleasure, we welcome our newest partner, Lions Club International. For almost 100 years, Lions Clubs International has sponsored programs to help people with vision loss, including restoring eyesight, better eye care, braille literacy, and access to assistive technology. Through their Reading Action Program, Lions encourages programs that support the advancement of literacy around the world. They believe literacy is tremendously important because “it forms the basis for individual academic, occupational, and social success, and can also empower communities to fight poverty, reduce child mortality, achieve gender equality, and ensure peace and democracy.”1 The Reading Action Program “is a…

BYU Peery Entrepreneurship Program and Bookshare Partnership

Bookshare has developed innovative technology to make textbooks more accessible to blind and visually impaired students. Before now, blind and visually impaired students missed out on thousands of images in their textbooks. Imagine studying science without being able to see the charts, graphs or diagrams in your textbook! Using a simple on-line tool we call Poet, our volunteers write vital descriptions for textbook images. On March 4, Brigham Young University students sponsored a competition among campus-based church groups to write image descriptions in textbooks for Bookshare members. Dozens of students participated in the two-hour challenge, writing over 600 descriptions…

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Published February 14, 2013

A Bookshare Valentine’s Day Love Story

This true story was written by two Bookshare volunteers, Evan Reese and Lissi Deren. She was a proofreader in Ohio who saw a new Welsh name, Evan Reese, on the Bookshare volunteer list. His messages were articulate, optimistic, technically sound, sometimes funny, and always courteous. He was a scanner who saw happy messages from Lissi, noticed she loved animals, and better yet, she was a fan of The Lord of the Rings, proofreading a book, One Ring to Bind Them All. On May 20, 2006, he emailed her off list asking her to hurry because he wanted to read it.…

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Published January 31, 2013

The Year That Was and the New Year Ahead

2012 was a year of titanic shifts in the fields of consumer technology, education, and publishing, along with the requisite challenges brought about by such rapid change. At Benetech, where innovation is the engine behind our mission, we did our best to make the most of it and help lead the charge into the future. 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. We celebrated the tenth anniversary of Bookshare—both online and with in…

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Published December 6, 2012

The Loss of a Longtime Bookshare Friend

Sadly, on the last morning of November, a longtime Bookshare staff member, volunteer, and friend, Mayrie Renae, peacefully died in her sleep. Many Bookshare friends and volunteers are mourning her passing. A friend of hers, Lissi Deren, shared this wonderful eulogy to her life and work with us; we wanted to share it with you. Mayrie wasn’t finished living and loving and being a dynamic force for good in Bookshare, but she was spared increased suffering as her illness worsened. I finally brought myself to write to you because I think it is better for you to hear this from…

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Published December 5, 2012

Meet An Image Description Volunteer

Bookshare volunteer, Steven Obenour, lives in Jacksonville, FL. He currently supports the Poet image description project with a special focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) texts. Steven has worked more than 32 years in various technical occupations including manufacturing and process engineering, software development, and the robotics industry. Technical writing is always a big part of his work responsibilities. Steven continues to work in temporary and contract employment positions. He says the volunteer opportunities with Bookshare improve his creativity and writing skills. He enjoys setting daily goals and targets for completion of image descriptions and finds that even…

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Published September 27, 2012

Students Volunteer to Make Textbooks Accessible for Bookshare Members

The Bookshare textbook image description volunteer program is excited to announce two partnerships kicking off the new school year. Last winter, Bookshare launched a partnership with BYU students through their Peery Social Entrepreneurship program. The partnership was so successful (and fun) that BYU, led by returning student Ted Jackson, chose to continue the work begun last term. The BYU charter promotes volunteerism by recruiting fellow students to write image descriptions in Bookshare textbooks. Last spring, the BYU Bookshare charter contributed hundreds of descriptions and developed a facilitator’s guidebook for establishing such charters on other college campuses. This fall, their goals…

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Category: Volunteers