Friday, December 3, 1999, was the United Nations International Day of Disabled Persons. Scheduled to debut Friday is wemedia.com's full-service destination website for people with disabilities.

WE Magazine's publisher created the wemedia.com site to offer access to information, education, products, and services for disabled persons and their families. According to the United States Census Bureau, 10% of Americans have a severe disability such as blindness.

Alexander Spinelli, wemedia.com's CTO (Chief Technology Officer) said "the access to quality information from trusted resources is a major problem for people with disabilities." He describes wemedia.com as "a funnel for relevant information."

Walter Cronkite, the former CBS anchorman who acts as an adviser to the site, called the new tools "the ultimate prosthetic." The tools will enable the disabled to do such things as take online college courses and participate in discussion groups, he said.

One of the services offered by wemedia.com is a coding for vibrating mice that help visitors "feel" boxes and images on the computer screen.

Wemedia.com is working toward becoming fully "Bobby" compliant in the next two weeks. "Bobby" is a Web-based tool that analyzes Web pages for their accessibility to the disabled

Dave Murphy is founder and membership director of ITrain, the International Association of Information Technology Trainers. ITrain is the global professional society for IT trainers.
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