Bookshare Blog

Published April 25, 2012

Furthering 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…

Words of Wisdom on Transition from a College Freshman

How does a very talented, bright, highly motivated young woman with severe dyslexia succeed in college? How is she getting almost a 4.0 GPA, top grades in all her classes, without her mom sitting beside her, patiently reading every word in every book as she did for twelve years? All incoming freshman experience some college jitters, but this driven young woman, Elizabeth, was justifiably concerned about succeeding in classes with hundreds of others students who didn’t have dyslexia. Her story about her transition should inspire many high school seniors in similar situations: “When I applied to college, I asked for…

Can We Give Too Much?

A guest post from Lucy Greco, a blind advocate for accessible technology. An Assistive Technology Specialist at UC Berkeley, San Francisco Bay Area, Greco is the user of various assistive technologies since the early 1980s. She is passionate about the ways technology makes the world more accessible to everyone but especially to individuals with disabilities. “For students with disabilities in college and universities, where do we draw the line between providing them support services and teaching them to be independent,” asks Lucy Greco. I graduated from California State University Hayward in 1997. The ADA was only six years old and…

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Published April 9, 2012

Assistive 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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Published April 2, 2012

U.S. Senator Congratulates Bookshare on 10th Anniversary! Digital eBook Access Breaks Down Reading Barriers for U.S. Students with Qualified Print Disabilities

On March 8, 2012, ninety guests gathered at the U.S. Capitol to hear Senator Tom Harkin (IA- D), Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Appropriations Committee, recognize the good work of the staff and volunteers of Bookshare on its 10th anniversary. The Iowa Senator and Julie Freed, an assistive technology teacher and constituent of the Senator’s home state, thanked Bookshare for breaking down barriers to reading access for individuals with print disabilities. In his speech, Senator Harkin first acknowledged the leadership of Jim Fruchterman, Benetech’s CEO and the founder of Bookshare along with Betsy Beaumon, V.P. and General…

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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