Major Great News about Bookshare.org!
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- Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2007 08:27:42 -0400
Beneblog, the Benetech Blog, USA
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Major Great News about Bookshare.org!
By Jim Fruchterman
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
I'm delighted to share incredible news, which will transform Bookshare.org. On
Friday, the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S. federal Department
of Education made a major five-year award of $32 million to Bookshare.org. This
will further the objectives of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA), by supplying high quality textbooks and educational materials to
students with special needs. This funding is to fully support all schools and
students with qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and
post-secondary, with access to the entire Bookshare.org collection of
accessible electronic books and to software for reading those books. As of
October 1, 2007, we have ceased charging these schools and students anything to
join Bookshare.org. We also expect to add over 100,000 new educational titles
in high quality DAISY and Braille formats over the next five years, getting
students the terrific quality textbooks they need for academic succ
ess!
I spent most of the Clinton Global Initiative conference working with the
Department of Education's special ed professionals to wrap this up, and it
happened Friday afternoon: the last day of the federal government's fiscal
year. It was too late to announce it as a CGI commitment at the conference, but
the CGI folks were pretty excited for me.
We've already had a surge of schools registering with Bookshare.org just
through word of mouth spread by our volunteers. We'll be hiring new people to
help us meet the demand, so watch our job posts and Bookshare.org. This will
make a tremendous impact on Bookshare.org, and the winning of this competition
is a real mark of the strength of our team.
Posted by Jim Fruchterman at 5:51 AM
http://benetech.blogspot.com/2007/10/bookshareorg-bookshareorg.html
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