The state of Georgia has made a huge step in making reading and educational materials widely accessible to those with disabilities! Starting Friday July 1, the Georgia Libraries for Accessible Statewide Services (GLASS) network will be making over 425,000 e-books accessible and free for those who cannot read traditional print books due to blindness, low vision, dyslexia and other print disabilities. 

The online library involved in providing accessible reading materials is Bookshare, a Benetech global literacy initiative. “Every Georgian with an eligible print disability will now have free access to Bookshare’s vast online library including best-sellers, literature, nonfiction, picture books, educational texts, career guides and much more,” according to a press release from Georgia Libraries.

Currently, all students with qualifying disabilities have free access to the library, but now the network is free and available to anyone in Georgia with disabilities. With Bookshare e-books, GLASS users have options for how they engage with the reading material. They’re able to listen to words read aloud with high quality text-to-speech voices, can enlarge the text in the e-books, read in braille and more. Readers are also able to access the Bookshare e-books on many devices such as smartphones, computers, tablets, MP3 players and a variety of other assistive technology devices.

Georgia is now the second state to start this program and make it available to anyone with disabilities, not just students. New York was the first state to implement it beginning in November 2015.