About ABT

Accessible Books for Texas (ABT) is a Benetech project funded by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) that provides on-the-ground training and support to Texas public K-12 educators, parents, and students on accessible educational materials.

This valuable work features Bookshare® as a key resource for accessible materials. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), Bookshare is free for all U.S. students with reading barriers.

Benetech is a non-profit technology company based in Palo Alto, California. Benetech pursues projects with a strong social rather than financial rate of return on investment, harnessing open source technology to create innovative solutions to challenging social issues. Programs that Benetech supports include the Bookshare library, DIAGRAM, Route 66 Literacy, the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, the Martus software project, and Social Coding for Good.

Bookshare is the world’s largest online library of accessible reading materials for people with print disabilities. Individuals can sign up for membership and access the library on their own. Organizations serving individuals with print disabilities can sign up and provide access to their students or clients.

Through an award from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), Bookshare offers free memberships to qualified U.S. students and the schools that serve them. To complement this federal program, in April 2011, the Texas Education Agency approved funding to launch the Accessible Books for Texas project. The focus of the ABT project is to help educators in Texas:

• Learn about accessible ebooks, who needs and qualifies for them, and how they can help students to succeed
• Obtain and use accessible ebooks and textbooks

Learn more about how Bookshare and ABT are making a difference for Texas students, educators, and parents!