National Center for Technology Innovation
 

Major Grant Transforms Bookshare.org Service

October 4th, 2007

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With 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/.

Recent development (March 2009): Bookshare and Hachette Book Group (HBG) announced today that they have entered into a partnership to provide digital books for Bookshare’s accessible online library for people with print disabilities. Read more here.

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Topics assigned: Accessibility, Assistive Technology, Education, News ,

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3 responses to “Major Grant Transforms Bookshare.org Service”

7 10 2007
huebur (09:27:38) :

This is very exciting news. Can you share the timeline for the bookshare project? Susan

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10 10 2007
Heidi Silver-Pacuilla (10:06:01) :

This 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!

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15 02 2008
NCTI 2007 Technology Innovators Conference on the Infinite Thinking Machine (12:32:36) :

[...] 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 [...]

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