Press Releases
October 8, 2009
Chicago, IL and Palo Alto, CA - Encyclopaedia Britannica Grants Digital Rights to Bookshare
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., today announced an agreement with Bookshare to grant worldwide digital rights to its major reference collections.
July 22, 2009
Palo Alto, CA - First Partnerships with Prestigious University Presses Add Scholarly and Award-Winning Titles to Bookshare Library
Three prestigious university publishers have joined the Bookshare Publisher Partner Program to provide digital books for Bookshare's accessible online library for people with print disabilities. The University of Chicago Press, the University of California Press and New York University Press have all agreed to provide Bookshare with digital book files that will contribute thousands of new scholarly works to the Bookshare collection. Books from Nobel Prize winning authors and academic texts in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and disability studies will expand the choices available for students in higher education and readers of distinguished authors.
July 8, 2009
Palo Alto, CA - PLEXTALK™ Pocket Offers Individuals Who Are Blind and Visually Impaired a New Portable DAISY Player that Reads Bookshare Digital Books
Bookshare and Shinano Kenshi Corporation, Ltd. Announce Partnership - Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare announced a partnership with Shinano Kenshi Corporation, Ltd. (Japan and North America), a global leader in advanced technology hardware and precision electronics. This partnership will allow Bookshare members to easily download and read tens of thousands of accessible books on the new PLEXTALK™ pocket portable digital DAISY player and recorder. DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) players, like the PLEXTALK Pocket, easily convert Bookshare's digital text files to speech so books and newspapers can be read aloud. The PLEXTALK Pocket offers a new choice in portable devices to our Bookshare members and introduces the latest digital book navigation. Read the press release.
July 7, 2009
Palo Alto, CA - Individuals with Print Disabilities Gain New Opportunities to Read Bookshare Digital Books Using Mobile Speak Phone Technologies
Bookshare and Code Factory Announce Partnership July 7, 2009, Palo Alto, CA - Individuals with print disabilities can now choose new, low-cost mobile technologies to read more than 50,000 digital books and periodicals thanks to a partnership between Bookshare and Code Factory, Barcelona Spain; a leading global provider of screen readers, screen magnifiers, and Braille interfaces for a wide range of mainstream mobile devices. The Mobile Speak screen readers for mobile phones developed by Code Factory use synthesized speech to read aloud information displayed on the mobile phone screens including ebooks stored on their phones. Using this technology, Bookshare members who are blind or have visual impairments will have new alternatives and features like navigation, bookmarking and text search, to access digital books for work, study or reading pleasure. Read the press release.
April 29, 2009
Washington, DC - U.S. Colleges and Universities Partner with Bookshare
Bookshare announced today a University Partnership Program to significantly increase the availability of accessible materials and textbooks on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of U.S. post-secondary students who have a disability that keeps them from effectively reading printed books.
April 29, 2009
Washington, DC - U.S. Trade and Textbook Publishers Partner with Bookshare
In an effort to improve the availability and quantity of digital accessible educational books, textbooks and trade books, Bookshare, the world’s largest online accessible library for individuals with print disabilities, today announced partnerships with leading U.S. trade and K-12 publishers. Two dozen publishers have signed agreements with Bookshare to provide digital content, which over time will add tens of thousands of books in accessible formats to the Bookshare collection. These publishers include Brookings Institution Press, De Capo Press, HarperCollins, Modern Language Association of America, O’Reilly Media, Random House, Scholastic, The Hachette Book Group, and Townsend Press.
April 13, 2009
Palo Alto, CA - Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman to Speak at the National Press Club
Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman has been invited to speak this month at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Fruchterman will talk about Benetech’s Bookshare library which has led global initiatives to increase the availability of accessible published materials for individuals with print disabilities. Bookshare is the world's largest online library of accessible books and periodicals for people who are blind, have low vision, a physical disability or a reading disability that prevents them from easily reading a traditional printed book. During the event, Fruchterman will announce Bookshare’s University Partnership Program and new partnerships with major publishers who have agreed to donate digital files to Bookshare for qualified individuals to download.
January 27, 2009
Palo Alto, CA - Benetech Launches New Bookshare Library
Bookshare, the world's largest accessible online library for people with print disabilities, has been completely rebuilt to make it significantly easier for individuals with print disabilities to access the books they want and need. The new library offers many improvements including strengthened quality control standards for book content, free assistive software applications and a rapidly expanding collection of digital files from contributing publishers.
December 9, 2008
Palo Alto, CA - Department of Education Official Visits Benetech
A prominent U.S. Department of Education official who guides key policy decisions that impact people with disabilities will visit Benetech this week to discuss the Bookshare.org library. Tracy R. Justesen, Assistant Secretary for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, will review the recent expansion of Bookshare.org to serve all students with print disabilities in the United States.
October 20, 2008
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare.org Expands to Provide Accessible Books in India
Benetech's Bookshare.org library has announced three new partnerships with Indian organizations to support the availability of accessible digital texts in India. These partnerships will help International Bookshare.org begin to serve India's ten million blind people, three million of whom are children. Less than 5% of these children currently have access to education.
July 7, 2008
Dallas, TX - Benetech's Bookshare.org Library Wins Award From the National Federation of the Blind
Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman has been presented with one of the first-ever Dr. Jacob Bolotin Awards from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) in recognition of Benetech's outstanding contribution to improving the lives of blind people in the United States. Benetech operates the Bookshare.org library, which allows people with print disabilities to legally download books and periodicals to be read as Braille, large print or synthetic speech.
March 13, 2008
Palo Alto, CA, Volo, IL - Bookshare™ Partners With Don Johnston To Provide Free Text Reader For Print Disabled Students
Bookshare and Don Johnston have announced a partnership to provide qualified print disabled students with a free text reader to access electronic books from the Bookshare library.
January 30, 2008
Palo Alto, CA and Barcelona Spain - Bookshare and Code Factory Announce Partnership To Introduce Mobile Technology
Bookshare and Code Factory have announced the formation of a partnership to introduce technology that allows Bookshare members to read digital books on their mobile devices.
January 29, 2008
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare Releases NIMAS Validator Software
Benetech's Bookshare service has released a free beta version of its NIMAS Validator software application that locates errors in digital books produced under the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS).
October 15, 2007
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare Receives Five-Year $32 Million Award From U.S. Department of Education
The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Benetech's Bookshare project $32 million over five years to significantly expand the availability of accessible electronic books and the software for reading those books. Bookshare is the world's largest accessible library of scanned books and periodicals.
November 8, 2006
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare Puts 30,000 Accessible Books Online for Disabled Readers
Benetech's Bookshare project announced this week that its network of volunteers has succeeded in scanning 30,000 books, creating the world's largest accessible online library.
September 18, 2006
Palo Alto, CA - Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman Receives 2006 MacArthur
Jim Fruchterman, CEO of The Benetech Initiative, has been awarded a 2006 MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Each of this year’s 25 MacArthur Fellows learned this week that they will receive $500,000 in ”no strings attached” funding over the next five years.
March 22, 2006
Palo Alto, CA - Major Omidyar Network Investment Lifts Global Nonprofit to New Level
Benetech, the global technology nonprofit based in Palo Alto, announced today that it has received a $1.5 million investment from Omidyar Network. This major investment will help Benetech deliver on its ambitious three-year organizational business plan and focus on its grassroots digital initiatives in disability literacy and human rights. Read the Omidyar Network press release.
March 22, 2006
Palo Alto, CA, Baltimore, MD - Accessible Newspapers and Magazines Now Available Daily
Bookshare and the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) have teamed up to make local and national newspapers and magazines available and accessible online to people who are blind or have other print-related disabilities. Read the NFB-NEWSLINE® and Bookshare press release.
September 22, 2005
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare selected as EdNET 2005 Rookie of the Year finalist
The Heller Reports™, a leading provider of education market news and events, chose Bookshare as one of this year’s EdNET 2005 Industry Awards.
March 16, 2005
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare Offers Books in Spanish
Bookshare has expanded its online collection of accessible digital books to include books in Spanish.
February 17, 2005
Palo Alto, CA - Online Book-Sharing Service Increases Literacy Skills Among Students with Visual Impairments
What started as an online book sharing service for people with print disabilities, Bookshare, has grown into a cost-effective technology tool that is helping to improve literacy among K-12 and college students with visual or reading impairments by providing access to over 20,000 scanned books.
January 11, 2005
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare's Library Surpasses 20,000 Titles
Bookshare announced today that its online collection of accessible digital books has now exceeded 20,000 titles. With its collection growing by over 100 new books per week, Bookshare remains the world's largest provider of accessible digital books to individuals with visual impairments and learning disabilities.
July 22, 2004
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare Announces Results of National School Initiative
Bookshare has announced the results of a successful national school pilot initiative, funded in part by the NEC Foundation of America. Read the press release here.
April 23, 2004
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare, Lighthouse International Unveil Employment and Career Development Collection of Accessible Digital Books
Bookshare and Lighthouse International today unveiled a special collection of books - the Employment and Career Development Collection from the Lighthouse International.
March 12, 2004
Palo Alto, CA - Indiana University Partners with Bookshare to Expand Access to College Textbooks for Students with Disabilities
Indiana University, one of the nation's leading alternative text production facilities serving students with disabilities, has partnered with Bookshare to make college textbooks available to students with disabilities nationwide.
February 17, 2004
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare Launches Institutional Access
Bookshare now offers Institutional Access, allowing schools and groups to provide accessible digital books directly to students or other individuals with disabilities they serve.
March 4, 2003
Palo Alto, CA - Publisher O'Reilly Makes Books Accessible to People with Disabilities Worldwide Under Landmark Agreement with Bookshare
Bookshare announced an agreement with O'Reilly & Associates to make digital versions of O'Reilly books available worldwide to qualifying users with disabilities.
February 24, 2003
Palo Alto, CA - Pulse Data and Benetech Announce BrailleNote/Bookshare Collaboration
Pulse Data International and Benetech today announced a formal collaboration integrating Benetech's Bookshare initiative with Pulse Data's BrailleNote family of products.
December 10, 2002
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare wins award from Social Enterprise Alliance
Benetech's Bookshare was awarded a prize for its exemplary "earned income" project in the Social Enterprise Alliance's "Earned Income Showcase".
October 23, 2002
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare is recipient of Stockholm Challenge Award
Of 600 IT projects from 78 different countries, Benetech's Bookshare was selected one of eight winners in the Stockholm Challenge. Bookshare was recognized in the field of education.
October 23, 2002
Palo Alto, CA - Bookshare, Braille Institute Work Together To Increase Access to Braille Books
Bookshare's extensive online collection of electronic books can now be seamlessly ordered as hard copy Braille books, to be embossed and proofread by professionals at Braille Institute of America, Inc., significantly increasing access to books for Braille readers nationwide.
February 21, 2002
Palo Alto, CA - Benetech Announces Launch of Bookshare, Feb. 21, 2002
Leading nonprofit technology developer offers the first digital book-sharing service for people with print disabilities.