High-tech's disability mandate
Published: 15 Jan 2002 15:19 GMT
When things get tough, companies are forced to make cutbacks. The danger, of course, is that we'll make cuts in the wrong areas, or cut too deeply, and end up doing ourselves more harm than good.
In the high-tech industry, that could very easily be the case if we fail to maintain a steady focus on developing innovative solutions for people with disabilities, innovative ways to access information and online services.
The Internet has always been about access -- bringing diverse computer resources to people in disparate locations so they can all be more productive. Tim Berners-Lee, designer of the first Web protocols, put it this way: "The aim was unification of all the many information systems, each of which did different, useful things but which did not interoperate."
The pioneers of the Web saw the value in making it possible for a wide range of machines to interact -- machines with different microprocessors, different operating systems -- and the results have been nothing short of spectacular.
In much the same way, we all recognise the value of making it possible for people of differing abilities to take part in that network, and we must never lose sight of that, in good times or bad. I'm not talking about altruism here. I'm talking about enlightened self-interest -- or, in business parlance, the bottom line.
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