Bookshare Passes 150,000 Student Members and 125,000 Titles-Wins Award to Extend Innovative Tools and Content from U.S. Dept. of Ed., Office of Special Education

From a Bookshare Announcement:

Bookshare a global leader in copyrighted, digital accessible books for people with print disabilities, is dramatically overachieving its five year collection and member targets at the close of its fourth year of funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). Benetech, the parent nonprofit for Bookshare, simultaneously received a new 1-year award from OSEP for a project called ‘LIT’ or Leveraging Impact Through Technology.
In the LIT project, Benetech will use technology innovation to scale up efforts that will maximize impact for years to come and ensure equal access to quality education by students with disabilities. The LIT project, in partnership with the American Institutes for Research (AIR), will advance the important work delivered under the Bookshare for Education (B4E) project in the areas of new content, tools and increased utilization, with a focus on these key areas:

• Open-content, publicly available and freely shared image descriptions and reusable graphical models to enhance accessibility in *NIMAC books and Common Core titles
•  A free, open source Android ebook reader and a free web-based ebook reader along with an accessible bookshelf in “the cloud,” enabling teachers to more easily assign books to students and enabling parents and students to add books, accessible from multiple devices.
• Access to Bookshare books in mp3 and DAISY audio.
• Free nationwide professional development designed to increase utilization, leveraging AIR’s experience in practice and delivery and Bookshare’s proven hands-on Professional Development Workshops.

Read the Complete Announcement
Direct to Bookshare Web Site

Filed under: Awards, Funding, Publishing