'Handicapped access' hits the Web
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In fact, for him, the Net is an absolute necessity, even when it comes to idle talk among friends.
It just so happens that Stilwater is a quadriplegic. "The only time I get out is to go to the doctor," he says. The Web has brought a sense of "normalcy" to his life.
Stilwater, who in 1988 founded the Computers for Handicapped Independence Program, says Internet access "makes a difference between living and just existing" for many handicapped people.
Yet, as Stilwater notes, the vast majority of Web sites keep users with visual, hearing or other impairments from accessing some of their content.
But that could be about to change.
The federal government, in an effort similar to that undertaken to open up access to public buildings and public transport systems through the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), is now focusing on the Internet.
Widespread effects
Next month, it will unveil recommendations for standards aimed at ensuring that government-operated Web sites are fully accessible to the disabled.
Once these standards are finalized in February 2000 and implemented later that year, observers say, the same sweeping changes in store for the public sector are likely to hit commercial Web site operators, too.
The potential? Sites that use dizzying graphics will have to consider their impact on users with visual impairments. Those that include audio will have to make sure they provide the text to go with it, so deaf users have full access.
Even the makers of public Internet kiosks will have to overhaul their designs, taking into account the necessary height requirements for users confined to wheelchairs, experts predict.
The standards are being developed by a little-known government agency called the U.S. Access Board, which was responsible for setting the ADA guidelines after it was signed into law in 1990, said Jenifer Simpson, manager of technology initiatives at the President's Committee on Employment of People With Disabilities.
The Access Board, with the help of a committee made up of technologists and industry leaders, will release the first draft of the standards for public comment this summer. The Department of Justice has been ordered by Attorney General Janet Reno to oversee a yearly survey of sites' compliance with the standards.
The impact could extend further, some experts said. Sites buying from or selling to government agencies could have to think about complying with the standards eventually as well, Simpson and other experts said.
It's a basic right
Advocates for the disabled believe opening up access to the Internet to the estimated 54 million handicapped people now living in the U.S. is crucial.
"This is really a civil rights issue," Simpson said, noting that while many high-tech executives fret about excessive government regulation of the Net, it would never have existed without government intervention.
"The Internet is subject to market forces, but it didn't start through market forces, it was started by the federal government," she said. "The government has a real interest in seeing that the disabled are not discriminated against."
Judy Brewer, the director of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Access Initiative and a member of the Access Board's Electronic and Information Technology Access Advisory Committee, said she believes the new standards will be a catalyst for commercial sites to improve access for the disabled.
"I'm certainly hoping that they increase awareness about the issue," Brewer said.
Brewer, Simpson and other experts predicted that as with the issue of consumer data privacy, Congress may eventually step in if the industry does not regulate itself on disability access.
'Major problem'
"The number of sites that are accessible to the disabled is a very small minority right now," Brewer said. "We have a major problem, and the trend is toward making sites even more complex, which decreases accessibility even further."
With the Internet being such a critical tool in education, employment, and civic life, "the impact of inaccessibility is becoming more significant," Brewer said.
Advocates for the disabled are quick to point out that the changes needed to allow full access aren't costly. Nor would they prohibit graphics.
"You can have full access and still have all the elements you want to have on your site," said Michael Cooper, a technologist at the Center for Applied Special Technology, a non-profit that advocates the use of computer technology by the disabled.
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