Do you know someone who might benefit from knowing about Bookshare?

Bookshare® is the world’s largest accessible online library for people with print disabilities. More than 360,000 people in nearly 50 countries have access to Bookshare's collection of over 350,000 titles. More than 500 U.S. and international publishers contribute to our social mission by donating their digital files, making it possible for Bookshare to serve users around the world and ensuring that content is available to people with print disabilities at the same time as their peers.

Bookshare is a Global Literacy initiative of Benetech, a leading Silicon Valley-based nonprofit technology company founded by Jim Fruchterman, a MacArthur Award-winning social entrepreneur and former rocket scientist.  Benetech uses technology to address pressing social needs. Its four programs—Global Literacy, Human Rights, the Environment, and Benetech Labs—measure success in the number of lives changed for the better.

In addition to Bookshare, Benetech’s Global Literacy Program includes the DIAGRAM Center, a Research and Development Center whose goal is to dramatically change the way image and graphic content is produced and accessed and Route 66, an online instructional literacy program for adolescent and adult beginning readers.

Bookshare operates in the U.S. under a copyright exemption—the Chafee Amendment—which grants nonprofit organizations the ability to make books available to people with print disabilities without publisher permission. Bookshare receives publisher permission to provide books to members outside the U.S. and receives significant publisher cooperation in building its collection.

Thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), Bookshare is free for all qualified U.S. students. Qualified individuals who are not students pay a nominal annual fee for their membership. Our membership partners may also cover part or all of the membership fees.