A dozen years ago, friends were impressed when I told them I'd done a major portion of my Christmas shopping with my computer.

        CompuServe offered at that time an Electronic Mall of some 100 retail specialty and department stores, complete with text descriptions of products and easy menu-based ordering procedures that could be done at the keyboard 24 hours a day.

        The irony has been that as online shopping has become wildly popular in the last few years, its graphical orientation has made it much more difficult for people using screen readers and refreshable Braille displays to navigate. In other words, while many people with disabilities were once on the cutting edge of online shopping, many of us are just now re-entering the game.

        It can be disconcerting to go to a favorite retailer's Web site and find that each link reveals only the word “Image” or offers instructions such as “click here” with no indication as to what is being clicked on. The National Organization on Disability says $1 trillion of consumer purchasing is controlled directly or indirectly by people with disabilities each year. Many of those dollars will be spent online, which means that, aside from being the “right thing” to do, it is good business sense to design Web sites that can be navigated by all customers.

        Many retailers with online marketing efforts have begun to recognize the purchasing power of people with disabilities through firsthand experience. As an increasing number of online shoppers identify themselves as having disabilities, businesses are becoming more aware that Web sites that can be read by everyone generate more sales.

        Then, of course, there are the Web sites which aren't selling anything but good old-fashioned information. As with the concrete “traffic” environment where moving vehicles reign, the Supreme Court has declared it illegal to open Internet business sans curb cuts.

        In general, Web sites can be easily designed (or retrofitted) to be accessible if text occurs in tandem with graphics, so that a person unable to interpret a picture has words to convey its meaning and, conversely, where strictly audible cues are supported by written text.

        The General Services Administration issued a simple list of 13 rules to help federal departments keep their online environments within the law. Specifically, they are:

        1. Provide text alternates to images.

        2. Make meaning independent of color.

        3. Identify language changes.

        4. Make pages style-sheet independent.

        5. Update equivalents for dynamic content.

        6. Include redundant text links for server-side image maps.

        7. Use client-side image maps when possible.

        8. Put row and column headers in data tables.

        9. Associate all data cells with header cells.

        10. Title all frames.

        11. Make the site script independent.

        12. Synchronize multimedia equivalents.

        13. Provide an option to skip repetitive links.

        Web designers who catch the spirit of these rules can build accessible sites with very little additional effort. Just as their street corner design counterparts learned before them, they'll see these courtesy curb cuts being enjoyed by many who do not have disabilities as well as by those who do.

        Businesses or organizations who would like to check the accessibility of their existing sites can go to www.cast.org/bobby/ for a detailed report. Simply fill in the URL of the site you'd like inspected, and Bobby will generate a detailed report. More than 1,200 sites now display the Bobby-approved icon, indicating that a Web site has been found to be inclusive and accessible to all.

        Cincinnati writer Deborah Kendrick is a nationally recognized advocate for people with disabilities. Write her at Cincinnati Enquirer, Tempo, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202. E-mail:dkendrick@enquirer.com.

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