Monster.com, the online job-search company, recently found out it was easier for some disabled people to get inside its building than to use its Web site.

For people in wheelchairs, a curb cut had been made in the sidewalk outside the sprawling old textile mill in Maynard, Mass., where Monster is located. But the company hadn’t made any special provisions for disabled people who were interested in its 450,000 online job postings.

After receiving calls for assistance from a paraplegic, someone with poor vision, and other disabled persons, the company has begun building what might be thought of as virtual access ramps. "Monster strives to be all things to all people," says Dodi Perkins, vice president of business development.

No one knows how many people with severe disabilities use the Web. But, like Monster, many companies are beginning to realize they have to make their sites more accessible if they are to reach that huge audience—26 million people in the U.S. alone. In any case, U.S. businesses soon may have no choice. (Companies and governments in the rest of the world, particularly the European Union, have done a pretty good job of addressing the problem, according to Mike Paciello, author of Web Accessibility for People with Disabilities.)

Cyndi Rowland, an assistant professor at Utah State University’s Center for Persons with Disabilities, believes that a court action should be expected and would extend to the Internet the Americans with Disabilities Act—the 1990 law that mandates those curb cuts, wheelchair ramps, Braille signs, and other physical accommodations.

Already, a suit brought by the National Federation of the Blind has caused Internet service provider America Online Inc. (www. aol.com) to make changes to its popular site. Connecticut’s attorney general won agreement from H&R Block (www.hrblock.com) and other tax-preparers to adjust their online services for the disabled. All federal agencies and U.S.-financed organizations must comply with stringent accessibility rules for Web sites by June 21.

Accessibility isn’t necessarily difficult. It may involve providing captions for Web video for the deaf, or labeling graphics and links with tags—software can read the tags to blind people. Mostly, being accessible requires attention to detail. For instance, it helps to arrange related elements of a Web page in an orderly cluster. That way, someone can move easily between them, even if he is a quadriplegic who has the use of only one finger or is using his mouth to control a "puff" or "sip" switch and navigate a Web site.

The main problem is that few people realize how inaccessible their sites are. Rowland ruefully puts herself in that category, admitting, "Boy, did I have professional egg on my face." Kevin Phillips didn’t stumble across the issue until he was surfing for special hardware for his severely disabled son. Having been about to launch Upbeats.com, which sells books, music, art, and videos, Phillips first made the site much more accessible.

Advice is just a click away. WebAIM.org, started by an embarrassed Rowland, provides information about how to build Internet access ramps. The World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative (www.w3.org/wai) offers access to "Bobby," a free online accessibility check created by the Center for Applied Special Technology. Vischeck lets owners view their sites through the eyes of colorblind consumers, addressing a common problem that is literally hard to envision: that color-coding something like a city bus map will leave many Web users seriously confused.

Of course, not even the most diligent Web designer will get everything right. When Sachin Pavithran, who can’t see, tried to shop at a dot-com, he went to one that was helpfully outfitted with tags. As he listened intently to their descriptions, his computer intoned, "Mini-dash, tab, slash...." Pavithran quickly gave up. "You get a bunch of garbage along with the information" you are looking for, he said with a sigh.

Even greater obstacles may loom as technology advances. Cellular phones and personal digital assistants are hard enough for people without disabilities to navigate, and they are going to play an increasingly important role in use of the Internet. Yet some advocates for the handicapped predict new answers from wireless technology. "Actually, that is a great boon to accessibility," says Gregg Vanderheiden, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Trace Research Center. He believes that trying to make Web pages work on a cellphone will push designers to convert graphics to text, which can easily be converted into speech for the disabled. Indeed, Web-browsing PDAs that listen and talk back already are arriving on the market.

Jeff Pledger, founder of AbleTV.net, a Web television service for people with disabilities, says solid business reasons will drive companies to solve technical problems that arise. He cites Clinton administration estimates that disabled Americans have annual discretionary income of more than $175 billion.

He asks: "If your Web site is inaccessible to people with severe disabilities, what portion of that do you have any chance of getting?"

Rosen is a television reporter and free-lance writer based in Salt Lake City. He can be reached at rosenpm@kutv2.com.

POCKET POWER

WearLogic thinks it has the answer for people whose wallets are way too fat, stuffed with business cards, receipts, money, and scraps of paper. The company (www.wearlogic.com) hopes people will chuck those billfolds for its electronic SmartWear Wallet, which will not only stay trim but also is smart, to boot.

The SmartWear Wallet packs a keyboard and display screen and stores telephone numbers, dates, expense information, and other personal data. Call it a slimmed-down version of a personal digital assistant. The electronic wallet weighs a few ounces more than a regular wallet and is a bit thicker, but not to the point of being bulky.

You can sit on the wallet, because SmartWear products use a patent-pending plastic technology that resists shattering. The circuit, keyboard, display screen, and rechargeable battery all are bendable.

With 500 kilobytes of memory, there is plenty of room for data, says Paul St. Pierre, co-founder of WearLogic. He says an address book with 1,500 contacts takes up just "a couple of hundred kilobytes." He adds that, "because it’s a wallet, it’s something that you carry around naturally—unlike a PDA, which you have to remember to take with you."

Unlike many PDAs, the SmartWear Wallet, as well as a clutch for women, can handle electronic money loaded on to prepaid cards. It can check what you have purchased with your smart card, such as groceries or airline tickets, or determine the digital cash balance on the card.

Information can be transferred between a personal computer and the wallet using a cable. In time, WearLogic plans to incorporate the Bluetooth wireless technology—which enables users to connect a wide range of computing and telecommunications devices—into the wallet, so it can communicate freely with nearby laptops, printers, and other electronic devices that use the emerging standard.

The SmartWear Wallet and clutch are expected to cost $300 or less and should be available by June. The Bluetooth versions, which haven’t been priced, are expected to be available in the second half of the year.

For more information: www.wearlogic.com.

REACH OUT AND CLICK SOMEONE

In an attempt to limit those games of phone tag that we all seem to play so often, eDial Inc. (www.edial.com) is marketing a service that lets people e-mail phone numbers that recipients can activate, toll free, just by clicking a mouse.

Someone using the service, called 800.eDial, pastes his phone number to an e-mail in the form of an Internet address, or hyperlink. When the e-mail recipient clicks on the link, the person who sent the e-mail will hear his phone ring. When he picks up the phone, he will hear ringing on the other end, then the e-mail recipient picking up the phone. The eDial system keeps track of the length of the call and bills the e-mail’s sender at the end of the month.

The call is carried on the phones that both people regularly use and is conducted over normal phone lines. It isn’t Internet-based telephony, which can produce poor sound quality.

The toll-free e-mail dialing is one of several offerings from eDial, a start-up company. The company’s flagship service lets users dial one person, or a group, from a computer or personal digital assistant by clicking on a name or e-mail address stored in an electronic organizer. Once the call goes through, eDial rings the caller’s phone so he can pick up before anyone answers.

The cost of basic eDial service, which includes 800.eDial, starts at $9.95 a month for individuals and small businesses and comes with 100 minutes of eDialing. Any calls beyond that quota cost 20 cents a minute. For $49.95 a month, users get 900 minutes of calls. The company also has corporate packages available.

For more information: www.edial.com.

WWW.AKE-UP CALLS

SimpleDevices Inc. thinks people need a little more variety in how they get up in the morning. Rather than have clocks set to a local radio station or to an alarm, SimpleDevices is giving people the choice of downloading songs, or other files, from the Internet to their alarm clocks. People could thus decide to wake up to their favorite Frank Sinatra song, the sound of a lion, or just about anything else.

Because the SimpleDevices clocks have access to the Internet, they also could be set to state, perhaps, what happened overnight in foreign stock markets. Or, the clock might read the local weather forecast, the latest traffic report, or the times and subjects of the first few meetings that someone has that day. The information also could be viewed on the clock’s display.

SimpleDevices (www.simpledevices.com) uses a wireless connection so that its SimpleClock can talk to a nearby personal computer and gather the songs, sounds, or information from the Internet. A user tells the clock what he wants by going to the SimpleDevices Web site. Software lets the user "drag and drop" content into an icon symbolizing the clock and then indicate when he wants it played.

Like other clocks, SimpleClock has that one all-important feature: a snoozebar.

Using a related SimpleDevices product called SimpleFi, content also can be dropped into an icon for the home stereo system, creating a playlist that a user can choose by using the system’s normal remote control. Using a similar system, SimplePad, someone can arrange to have the PC transmit information wirelessly to his PDA, or can synchronize his PDA and PC.

SimpleFi and SimplePad, expected to cost about $100 each, should be available by June. SimpleClock, which will cost about $200, is scheduled to make its debut in the third quarter.

For more information: www.simpledevices.com.

‘GO AHEAD, PUNK, MAKE MY DATA’

Remember Robocop, the part-human, part-machine crime fighter who made his debut in the 1987 film? Well, he’s gone totally cyber and has even less remorse than Hollywood’s other cold-blooded enforcer, Dirty Harry.

RoboGuard is a pistol-packing robotic security guard that can do almost anything a flesh-and-blood guard can do, save for ad-libbing if he forgets his lines. RoboGuard can be programmed to fire automatically at intruders, relying on infrared sensors to track someone on the move. Fitted with a camera, the robot also can be ordered to wait for a human "shoot" command delivered over the Internet.

When RoboGuard made its debut as a prototype in August in Thailand, it was stationary. Its creator, Pitikhate Sooraksa of King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology in Ladkrabang, Bangkok, says the robot can be made mobile.

RoboGuard’s unveiling triggered alarm bells among scientists who fret that robots will soon wield too much power. Critics also have voiced concerns that technical glitches could trigger accidental shootings.

Sooraksa says he wouldn’t advocate letting the robot fire at will. Instead, he would recommend using a feature that would require a human operator to key in an encrypted password before the robot could shoot.

Sooraksa says he has no plans to develop RoboGuard commercially, conceding that the armed robot could fall into the wrong hands. (Now there’s a James Bond plot!) Instead, the inventor says he would like to transfer the technological know-how to the Thai military or police, who could use robots to keep humans out of harm’s way. It is unclear whether the military or the police are interested.

Meanwhile, Sooraksa says he will "pause development for the sake of humanity. I’m now focused on developing high-tech toys and other types of robots."

For more information: www.ite.kmitl.ac.th.

‘HAVE YOUR MACHINE CALL MY MACHINE....’

First there was B2C (business-to-consumer), then came B2B (business-to-business). Now comes M2M, or machine-to-machine, communications.

Graviton Inc. (www.graviton.com) is pioneering a wireless sensor technology to let machines report on their conditions to central computers over cellular-phone frequencies. A sensor in a soda dispenser might let a soft-drink maker know whether the machine was using the right amount of syrup when producing drinks in a fast-food restaurant. If not, the Graviton system could automatically reset the soda dispenser.

A power company could have the temperatures of its transformers at substations sent to it every five minutes. If the temperature spiked at a transformer, software at the company’s central facility would automatically shut down the transformer and prevent a potentially expensive problem. According to Peter Thompson, Graviton’s marketing director, utilities today can’t monitor their substations in such a regular fashion; it is expensive to run an ordinary telephone line to a substation, because it involves trenching and plenty of concrete, and the high voltage at a substation can interfere with wire-line transmissions. Thompson says the Graviton network reduces interference by using "spread-spectrum" wireless technology, meaning the network splits its signal among numerous frequencies.

On the domestic front, a sensor attached to a home’s furnace could immediately alert the gas company about leaks. Both at home and at work, the technology could make it easier to fix on-the-blink machines without the intrusion of the human hand.

Solomon Trujillo, the former US West chief executive who heads Graviton, says "Sensor networks are destined to become, in effect, the nervous system of our engineered world."

Pricing hasn’t been set, but a Graviton executive says that, when averaged over an entire network, individual sensor nodes typically should cost in the "tens of dollars." The technology is expected to be available commercially in the second half of 2001.

For more information: www.graviton.com.

(TAIL)PIPE DREAM

Industrial researchers in Australia have developed a smog buster that not only will sharply cut a car’s harmful emissions but, in the process, perhaps also even turn any crate into a diamond factory.

The researchers use a microwave system that "broils" a car’s exhaust gases to the point that they can be broken down into such cleaner products as oxygen, water, and carbon. What is more, Elias Siores at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, who developed the converter with Carlos Destefani, says his team is working on a system to collect the carbon particles belched out in the conversion process and turn them into industrial-grade diamonds.

The smog buster, which weighs about 11 pounds, is attached to a car’s exhaust system, and a filter is installed in the car’s tailpipe to collect the carbon particles. The filter would be removed when a car is serviced, and the carbon sent to a factory where it would be heated with microwaves and turned into diamond powder. The powder could be employed as a scratch-resistant coating on optical lenses, compact discs, and watches. "It could also be used for prolonging the life of bioengineering materials, including prosthetic hip joints, orthopedic pins, and artificial heart valves and veins," Siores says.

The system has cut carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrocarbon emissions as much as 90% in the lab, according to Siores. He estimates the reduction would be closer to 70% on the road.

Siores and Destefani hope to have the converter on the market within three years. They estimate the device would cost about 300 Australian dollars (US$165) at the outset.

For more information: www.swin.edu.au/iris/welcome.htm.