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Published September 20, 2016

Benetech Delivers 10 Million Accessible Ebooks

Benetech’s Bookshare technology makes reading possible for over 425,000 individuals unable to read standard print and empowers students and adults to succeed in school, work and social inclusion.  PALO ALTO, Calif. — September 20, 2016 — Benetech, the leading nonprofit empowering communities in need by creating scalable technology solutions, today announced that over 10 million accessible ebooks have been downloaded through its Bookshare initiative. Bookshare is the world’s largest online library for people who are blind, visually impaired or have a physical disability that interferes with reading, such as dyslexia. “Access to information is a basic human right,” said Jim Fruchterman,…

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Published March 8, 2016

2016 National Education Technology Plan Resonates with Benetech Priorities of Equity and Accessibility

Benetech is a nonprofit company leveraging Silicon Valley technology and process to create and scale solutions for pressing social issues.  Two Benetech initiatives, the DIAGRAM Center and Born Accessible, are cited in The 2016 National Education Technology Plan (NETP) released by the Office of Educational Technology of the U.S. Department of Education. The report recommends that “education stakeholders should develop a born accessible standard of learning resource design to help educators select and evaluate learning resources for accessibility and equity of learning experience.” More significantly, though, all of Benetech’s work closely aligns with these two key themes of the report:…

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Published September 23, 2013

Objecting to Accessibility Weaseling

Post by Benetech CEO, Jim Fruchterman In early September, the National Federation of the Blind and 22 organizations serving people with disabilities filed detailed objections to a petition from a group of makers of e-reader devices led by Amazon to be exempted from accessibility requirements under the relatively new Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Benetech was a proud endorser of these objections (under our legal organizational name of Beneficent Technology, Inc.). You might ask: why would an organization that in many ways provides a competitive alternative to e-readers object to e-readers being exempted from accessibility requirements? Wouldn’t that…

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Published December 29, 2010

2010 – A Tremendous Year

2010 has been a tremendous year for the Literacy Program at Benetech.  We’ve enjoyed working with all of our members, sponsors, partners, volunteers and funders, and we have much to celebrate together.  Thank you for your support in achieving our mission! Bookshare passed a number of major milestones this year: We are now serving over 120,000 people with print disabilities; Our US members now have access to over 95,000 books and periodicals; Users downloaded over 800,000 books in 2010; Under our Bookshare for Education (B4E) project, we passed our 5 year goal of adding 100,000 student members in under 3…

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