Challenges and Barriers to Successful Employment for Man with Visual Impairment

By Louis Herrera

Louis Herrera

Louis Herrera

I was born with normal eyesight, and at the age of three and a half it was determined that I had a visual impairment. By the time that I was about seven years old, I had lost most of my eyesight.

At the inquisitive age of four, I wanted to know how things work and how a box could have different voices coming out of it. Learning about radios was the beginning of a path to a career in the technology industry.

At the age of 15 I built my first computer at a time when components were starting to decrease in size.

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My story: The Benefits of Working with Agencies like the Washington State Department of Services for the Blind

Odyssey Sea

Odyssey Sea

By Odyssey Sea

Getting a job right after I graduated was a very exciting and scary experience. Luckily, I had Washington State Department of Services for the Blind (DSB) staff to help me along the way because without their help, experiencing new things would have been difficult. At first, I was nervous. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do after high school. Luckily DSB staff stepped in and helped me figure out some things. I am getting job experiences with different companies like the Museum of Flight and at PAVE, a nonprofit that assists young adults like me. PAVE also assists parents, families and anyone connected to a child, youth or young adult with disabilities.

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10 Million Book Downloads Today Provides a 10x Model for Tomorrow

This is a cross-post from the Benetech Blog. Benetech is a grantee of the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)


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Many years ago I had the wild idea to start a deliberately nonprofit technology company in the heart of Silicon Valley. I knew that technology, when applied for social good, promised to usher in positive and sustainable change. Today’s 10 million download milestone is a celebration of our ability to deliver on that promise.

Ten million is more than a big number. It represents our ability to scale technology for global impact. It demonstrates what is possible when technology makes it 80x cheaper to create and 15x cheaper to deliver an accessible book. It shows our ability to empower communities in need with the tools to succeed.10 million download with Bookshare logo

Today’s milestone is worth celebrating, but like any good social entrepreneur, I’m focused on what’s next. What innovation needs to take place so the hundreds of millions of individuals who are unable to read standard print can access every published book? How can we realize our Born Accessible dream of all digital content serving blind people and sighted people equally?  What investments can we make today in order to have the greatest impact tomorrow? Finding answers to these hard questions through scalable technology solutions is what motivates me and the entire Benetech team.

Bookshare’s success provides a proven model for answering these questions. First, we must identify technology-driven solutions that will be 10x better or 10x cheaper (or both!) in delivering social impact. Next, we must engage our communities to test prototypes and to separate the good ideas from the truly great ideas. We will then take the best projects, inject the needed capital and scale them for global impact. The Bookshare model guided us to our 10 million milestone, and it’s a key model that will guide us to identify, develop and scale technology to tackle the hard questions we ask ourselves every day.

Moving forward, we will work hand-in-hand with school districts, libraries and our nonprofit partner organizations to make digital content accessible to everyone who needs it. We will work with publishers to ensure the right tools, standards and best practices are available to build accessibility into all content when it is first created. Globally, we will engage the communities we serve until every person can access every book in the way he or she needs to succeed.

I look forward to sharing more milestones on our mission to empower communities in need by creating scalable technology solutions. I hope you’ll come along with me and the Benetech team on this wild ride.

Check out the press release to learn more about this exciting milestone.