Digital Book-Sharing Unlocks Print for Students

Maurice Van Lowe, a 4th grader at Burning Tree Elementary School in Bethesda, Md., reads in his classroom using Bookshare, a nonprofit electronic service that converts books into more accessible formats for students with certain kinds of disabilities.

—Nicole Frugé/Education Week

With Bookshare, students with disabilities get quicker access to traditional texts

By Nirvi Shah

When 4th grade teacher Heather Whitby sat down for a book discussion last week with a group of students at her Bethesda, Md., elementary school, other students read on their own, including two who a year ago might not have been able to do so.

Because of their disabilities, Kyle Nordheimer and Maurice Van Lowe struggle with traditional printed text. But, using Bookshare , a nonprofit that provides free electronic copies of books to students with certain disabilities, both boys watched computer screens scroll through the text of The Chocolate Touch , listening to it at the same time.

Inspired by Napster , the music-sharing service, Bookshare turns books into a format that can be read aloud by computers, magnified, and spaced differently so that students with vision problems or learning disabilities can read them. They’re even available at the same time new releases reach bookstore...