The Beneblog is a weblog by Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman, on issues and ideas that affect the application of technology to unmet social needs.

Posted 05/15/2012:
Benetech’s New Image Description Tool Improves Accessibility of Graphical Content for Students with Print Disabilities

Benetech has long been a pioneer in providing innovative services to people with print disabilities. This week, Benetech’s DIAGRAM Center...


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Benetech Releases Software Tool to Support Crowdsourcing of Image Descriptions in Accessible Books

May 10, 2012, Palo Alto, CA — The Benetech DIAGRAM Center has released an open source web application to create and edit crowdsourced image descriptions in books used by students with print disabilities. The Poet application developed by DIAGRAM can help level the playing field by making otherwise inaccessible graphic content available for students and other readers with disabilities. Poet supports image descriptions for electronic books created in the international DAISY standard for digital talking books and will also be compatible with descriptions for ebooks in the EPUB3 format.

DIAGRAM, which stands for Digital Image and Graphics Resources for Accessible Materials, is dramatically changing the way image and graphic content for accessible educational materials is produced and accessed. Before this initiative, critical illustrations in math and science books could only be studied by those reading traditional texts. The DIAGRAM Center was launched in May 2010 by Benetech with support from the US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP). The Center is managed by Benetech in partnership with the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) and US Fund for DAISY (USFDAISY). For more information about the Poet tool read here.

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