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Major Grant Transforms Bookshare.org Service
Tags:Accessibility, Assistive Technology, Education, NewsWith a major $32 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Bookshare.org, the online collection of digital books, will be able to vastly increase its collection as well as provide its services without subscription. Jim Fruchterman, head of Bookshare.org, says they hope to reach every school and every student with a print disability to make digital text a reality for all who need it. Read the full press release at bookshare.org. Hear Fruchterman give the keynote address at the NCTI Annual Innovators Conference in Washington, DC, November 15 – 16, 2007.
This investment represents a major step forward for the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standards (NIMAS) implementation effort by eliminating a cost for access to digital text. A CAST-led 15 state Consortium will collaborate with this effort to facilitate the provision of specialized formats to students with print disabilities. Read more about the implications of these developments for NIMAS implementation at http://nimas.cast.org/.
Reader Comments
huebur on October 7, 2007 at 9:27 amThis is very exciting news. Can you share the timeline for the bookshare project? Susan
Heidi Silver-Pacuilla on October 10, 2007 at 10:06 amThis is such exciting news, but I don’t think there are hard deadlines published yet. What I do know is that Bookshare.org dropped their subscription fees immediately on Oct 1 when they got the grant. In the week that has passed, their registered user base DOUBLED! Wow. The word has gotten around quickly!
NCTI 2007 Technology Innovators Conference on the Infinite Thinking Machine on February 15, 2008 at 12:32 pm[...] entrepreneurs like Jim Fruchterman from the nonprofit technology company, Benetech. Recently, Benetech was selected by the Office of Special Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education to provide access [...]
