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Tag: dyslexia

Creating Equal District and Schoolwide Learning Opportunities for Students with Disabilities

Raising academic performance to meet the mandates of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is a critical mission for school leaders, yet finding solutions to accommodate diverse student populations across districts and schools can be overwhelming and costly. Students with learning disabilities or visual impairments, for example, have difficulty reading print books. Often, they need accommodations like audio, large print, or braille to make classroom and homework materials accessible. The effort and resources required to produce accessible educational materials (AEM) is significant. Teachers and librarians struggle to find textbooks and Common Core materials in accessible formats. Parents stress about support…

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Benetech Partners with Georgia Libraries for Accessible Statewide Services to Bring Bookshare to Patrons with Print Disabilities

GLASS offers over 425,000 accessible ebooks in its pursuit of total accessibility Benetech, provider of Bookshare, is proud to announce a new partnership with Georgia Libraries for Accessible Statewide Services (GLASS), making over 425,000 accessible ebooks available for free to patrons who cannot read printed books due to blindness, low vision, dyslexia, and other print disabilities. GLASS is the statewide network of talking book centers that provides library services for the blind and others whose physical abilities require the use of books and magazines in digital audio formats or in braille. Beginning July 1, every Georgian with an eligible print…

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#SVGives: 10 for 10 Brings Bookshare to More Readers

UPDATE: Thank you to the generous donors who helped us reach our goal of $10K to bring Bookshare to more readers!   Small gifts, big impact. Last year, in just one day, over $8 million dollars was raised for Bay Area nonprofits through Silicon Valley Gives, a community-wide day of giving hosted by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Benetech is one of hundreds of nonprofits in Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Benito, and San Francisco counties who are joining together to lift up and empower communities in need. Every contribution has an impact. No gift is too small. That’s why…

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Why We Are #Thankful

The Bookshare community is amazing. It’s over 370,000 people strong with an even larger cast of parents, teachers, and supporters. They live in over seventy countries and read more than a million and a half books every year. They dream big, accomplish great things, and live life to its fullest. The holiday season is a time for thanks, and we at Bookshare are thankful for this community. Let’s meet some of them. Lily loves to read, especially books about horses. She didn’t always like reading though. In fact, Lily disliked it because of her dyslexia. That changed when she started using Bookshare, and…

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Beyond the Dys in Dyslexia

In recognition of Dyslexia Awareness month in October, we are reposting a blog by McKenzie Erickson, Marketing Coordinator at Benetech, which originally appeared in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services Blog (U.S. Department of Special Education) on October 5. Dyslexia. It’s a word I’ve heard since the third grade. It was the explanation for why I couldn’t read, why I had to cheat on my weekly spelling tests, and why I felt different. I’ve since come to realize there is more to dyslexia than its disadvantages. When I was in school, I put a significant amount of energy…

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Some of the Most Anticipated Digital Books for Back to School

Note: This blog first appeared on The Inside Track – a blog for the Understood community. Benetech, Bookshare’s parent nonprofit, is one of fifteen founding nonprofit organizations in partnership with Understood, a resource for parents of children with learning and attention issues. More than 275,000 free text-to-speech digital books. That’s how many are downloaded the first two months of school every fall from our online Bookshare library. This year, we expect an even higher number of downloads. What are some of the hottest digital books for back to school going to be? Our librarians at Bookshare decided to investigate. We looked at data from…

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Bookshare Parents and Teachers Team Up for Back to School

Teamwork is the name of the game when it comes to supporting students with print disabilities Back to school is a challenging transition for all students, but it is especially difficult for students with visual, physical, or learning disabilities. Getting the books they need in a format that is accessible requires a collaborative effort between parents and educators. Sometimes parents are the first to discover valuable resources for their son or daughter, and sometimes teachers are the catalysts who enlist the parents’ help. It doesn’t matter who leads the charge as long as students get the tools they need to…

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Students with Print Disabilities Accelerate Reading with Bookshare

Assistive technology helps students with disabilities love books Bookshare has been a game changer for Brennan Draves, a fourth grader with a visual impairment, and Reagan Reeves, a ninth grader with dyslexia. Both students need schoolbooks in alternative formats to help them read and study. Brennan, a fourth grader at Mackensen Elementary School in Michigan, has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that makes it impossible to read traditional books. He used to read and study with printed braille books which were heavy and took time to produce. Since using Bookshare, reading books and doing homework is easier and more cost…

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Celebrating Fathers in Life and Literature

Did you know that Father’s Day started in 1910 in Spokane, Washington, but didn’t become an official holiday until 1972? Whatever the reason, let’s give Dad his due, whether we are talking about biological dads, stepdads, granddads, foster dads, honorary dads, or any special dad in your life. Fabulous fathers can be found throughout literature including Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird; Arthur Weasley in the Harry Potter series; Hans Hubermann in The Book Thief; Jean Valjean in Les Miserables; Charles Ingalls in the Little House series; Otto Frank in Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl; and Bob…

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Parent Learns About Bookshare through Twitter Chatter

We first met Jessica Prest, a parent from rural Massachusetts, on Twitter after she posted these tweets about her daughter: “Lily just finished her first chapter book in five days using Bookshare!”  “A year ago she hated to read. Today she finished a 25 pg. chapter book!” “My #1in5 #dyslexia #proudmom Thank u @Bookshare!” So began our quest to learn more about Lily, a young girl who once hated books, but now loves to read them from cover to cover. Jessica, Lily’s mom, describes her daughter as very bright, dynamic, and quite communicative. “At a young age, Lily talked a…

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