Sharing Publications with the Disabled

IMF Publications has agreed with Bookshare, a global online library for blind, vision impaired, learning disabled, and physically disabled readers, to make IMF books and other publications available through the program.

Bookshare makes publications accessible to those with a disability that makes it difficult for them to read a printed book. We have provided the online library with digital versions of all IMF publications and they in turn transform them into their ‘Daisy’ format which can be read using free software that reads the book aloud (text-to-speech) and/or displays the text of the book on a computer screen or Braille access device.

We are currently working with Bookshare to bring the Daisy files into the IMF eLibrary, so we can provide accessible books directly to our own subscribers.

Bookshare is a global online library for blind, vision impaired, learning disabled, and physically disabled readers to download into a variety of formats (Braille, synthetic speech, speech to text, large print). 

Over 60 publishers have signed with Bookshare and are donating digital files, including all the major trade publishing houses (Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Scholastic) as well as top university presses (Cambridge, Chicago, Princeton, Columbia, California, NYU, Michigan, Stanford) and K-12 and post-secondary publishers. https://www.bookshare.org/