Imagine a world with stairs but no elevators or ramps, narrow stalls in public bathrooms, spoken and printed language only. What a sad place to live in. How sad that someone in a wheelchair wouldn't be able to go so many places, that a blind person would never be able to read, that a deaf person wouldn't be able to converse in sign language. Fortunately, our world is not like this. And neither is the Internet world. When web pages are properly built, they are accessible to handicapped people. There are special browsers for just about every kind of handicap and, in fact, building your site to suit these various browsers can be fairly simple. But it does require some thought and dedication.

Why should you care about the disabled? Because every person that you know could potentially become disabled at some time in his or her life. Let me tell you my story...

I once knew a man named Haim ("life" in Hebrew). He was healthy and strong as an ox, a mechanic who loved working with his hands and was good at his job. He was a kind and loving man who would go out of his way to help anyone. He was also my father-in-law. One day, he discovered that he had a brain tumor. That tumor, which would eventually kill him, slowly took away the things that were most important to him in life. Within a few months, he was unable to work. I will never forget watching him try to change the wiper blade on our car -- even something that simple was no longer possible. Eventually, he was unable to walk without assistance, unable to feed himself, and eventually, he was unable to even get out of bed. Haim lived in a house with steps -- many of them. There were steps leading up to the house and then steps leading up to the bedroom (and no downstairs bedroom or shower). If pain and radiation treatment and chemotherapy didn't make his life bad enough, he had the extra burden of not being able to get around his own home.

I will not live in a home without a downstairs bedroom and bathroom (something that I might not have thought about before). And if there is any way to help people do the things that they love to do, despite a handicap, I will help them. You may have noticed this symbol on my main page. What it means is that my site is accessible to the disabled. Until recently, I was not very informed about making the Internet accessible to the disabled, but all of that was changed by a friend named Denny. I have worked hard to make my pages Bobby compliant and I am constantly trying to improve them. This has become one of my top priorities in building a web page. No matter what someone's handicap, they should be able to visit and enjoy my site.

What does Bobby compliance entail? Well, it means using good HTML, for starters. HTML errors can render your page incompliant. It also means providing text alternatives for all visual effects, providing access to your page without the use of frames (frames can be Bobby compliant, but you should always offer a no-frames option), it means avoiding complicated layouts that won't be easily understood by all browsers and more. Follow these linksto learn more.

• Bobby - Learn more about Bobby standards and validate your own pages for Bobby compliance
• Steps to making your page accessible to the disabled - My own page on creating Bobby compliant pages

If you need assistance in making your page accessible, please feel free to contact me. Not only will I be happy to help you, but I will be pleased to just receive the request.