Founded in 1931, JBI is a nonprofit organization that enables people of all ages and backgrounds who are blind, have low vision, or are print disabled to connect to and participate fully in Jewish cultural, literary, educational, religious, and communal life. It is committed to increasing accessibility and inclusion by creating, publishing, and distributing to individual patrons and partner organizations Jewish-interest materials in audio, braille, and large print.

The JBI Library forms the cornerstone of our work and includes a broad spectrum of Jewish interest Audio, Large Print, and Braille materials, all free of any charge and distributed to our patrons’ doorsteps. We are an associate agency of the Library of Congress National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS). Our collection encompasses fiction, history, biography, short stories, periodicals, humor, liturgical texts, poetry, Jewish studies, memoirs, cookbooks, and more. We also offer foreign language materials in Russian, Yiddish, Spanish, Hebrew, Hungarian, French, Romanian and Polish that allow us to serve readers worldwide.

JBI helps students who are blind, visually impaired or reading disabled to receive a Jewish education alongside their sighted friends and participate in communal life. Adults access the written word for pleasure, information, and religious observance. Older adults who unexpectedly find themselves forced to adjust to severe vision loss are reconnecting to the world of reading, Jewish culture, and social and communal activities. JBI is dedicated to reaching out to the community in an effort to raise awareness of JBI's free services.