Making the Web easier to navigate for people with disabilities has always been a mission for the true believers--a small band of volunteers, motivated by empathy or personal experience rather than business acumen.
But that's about to change.
In the next few months, all federal agencies will begin making their Web sites, software programs and other electronic sources of information accessible to people with disabilities, including the blind, deaf and wheelchair-bound. And a variety of companies and entrepreneurs are already preparing to provide products and services for this rich new market.
The potential stakes are enormous. The cost of revamping federal Web sites and other information technology for the disabled is estimated to range from $85 million to $691 million, according to the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board.
Large vendors such as Microsoft Corp., Lotus Development Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. already design and market disabled-friendly versions of their products. But the new government rules will provide a huge incentive for other businesses to follow suit.
Suddenly, the once lonely province of disabled-rights advocates who work on technology issues is growing more crowded.
Take Optavia Corp., a Madison, Wis., company that provides advice on how to make Web sites more accessible to general audiences. Disability-related business will account for one-quarter of the firm's activity this year--compared with none last year, said Shawn Lawton Henry, director of research and development. Henry attributes the uptick to increased awareness of the new federal requirements and the recent 10th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
"People are beginning to realize that this is going to be a competitive advantage," Henry said. "We've talked with people who have already lost contracts because their technology wasn't accessible."
Under new rules expected to go into effect by May, all federal agencies will have to make their new information technology accessible to both their employees and outside users of public information. This means they will have to make all new Web sites and systems accessible, as well as any products they change--for instance, a software program that is updated. Because much electronic information is constantly updated, the rules are expected to have broad impact throughout government.
Crafting a disabled-friendly Web site doesn't take much additional time or expense, said Denise Koschmann, a usability specialist at QRC in Bethesda. Mostly, she said, it just means remembering that not everyone can see the computer screen, hear the voices coming from the speakers or reach the keyboard with their fingers.
At the simplest level, Web designers need to include alternative descriptions of graphics--called "alt text"--that can be read by screen readers, devices that sit atop the computers of blind users and repeat aloud the written words on the monitor. Some of these devices can't understand columns and charts, so designers will need to offer alternatives to communicate statistical information.
Web sites that use streaming video interviews of government officials, for instance, would need to provide written transcripts or captions at the bottom of the computer screen for deaf users.
Marion Summerville said she knew back in 1996 that someday there would be a clamor to make the Web more open to people with different needs. After all, she thought, it was a "big duh," a common-sense way to reach a wider audience. One in 10 Americans report having some kind of disability, according to 1995 U.S. Census Bureau figures--a largely untapped online consumer market.
But it's taken four years for Summerville to feel comfortable enough to leave her day job designing Web sites to start her own accessibility company. Along with two business partners, Summerville is setting up D.C.-based Archeidos Corp., to train designers to pay more attention to how disabled people and others use technology.
"I've just been waiting for the market to catch up," Summerville said. "As Web services exploded in the late 1990s, access issues were just a matter of time."
Sarah Presley, a blind computer programmer, said she steams over cumbersome links to other Web pages, which are difficult to remember as her screen reader speaks them. And the long online forms that feature menus with "pull-down" answers--common when you're signing up with a new Internet service provider, for example--really irritate her.
"I get frustrated because it's really not that hard to make sites accessible," said Presley. Researchers have developed technology to alert Web designers to problems disabled users might have with their sites, including a site called Bobby that's operated by the Center for Applied Special Technology (www.cast.org/bobby). Just type in a Web address, and the program will report, line by line, which parts of the site are confusing or faulty.
Mike Paciello, founder of the Boston company WebAble Inc., recently signed a deal with the center to offer his disability consulting services to people who check their Web sites using Bobby. Paciello said technology that opens the door to disabled users can have applications that benefit other users. For instance, such technology tends to present information in both a graphics version and a non-graphics version, which would enable a Web site to be easily accessed over cellular phones, on personal digital assistants or through computers in cars. Voice-operated computing systems that help the blind also come in handy when a sighted person breaks his arm or tries to do several things at the same time.
The government has not ordered companies to make their technology accessible to the disabled, but the Justice Department, in a 1996 opinion, said the ADA applied to the Internet, perhaps paving the way for more legal action against privately operated Web sites. The National Federation of the Blind sued America Online Inc. earlier this year, arguing that some of the company's technology violated the ADA. The federation agreed to drop the suit after AOL promised to improve its technology, but the sentiment behind the suit remains strong.
"We're starting to get a taste of freedom of information," said Debbie Brown, a blind disability-rights advocate who works at the Library of Congress. "We're starting to get more militant about it because we know it can happen."
