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Tina

01/04/08 3:38 PM

#1301 RE: youhavenoidea #1300

Some people see it as an opportunity for greatness and not so negatively!

Take this guy for example!



Marco Sorani went to Princeton, where he was a swimmer and a water polo player. When he was 24, Sorani broke his fifth cervical vertebra in a body-surfing accident. Sorani lost the use of his legs and the ability to move his fingers. That accident led Sorani in an entirely new direction, one that has benefited him and many others.

Sorani saw a new opportunity and took it. He noticed that many of the 54 million disabled Americans like himself were not able to access websites. That was a sizable market that really needed some help. Sorani became the chief executive at SSB Technologies, a San Francisco firm that helps companies make their websites accessible to the disabled. SSB’s software can read captions out loud so that blind people can hear what is on the screen. It can also caption Web audio, enlarge linking buttons, and enlarge the text.

The U.S. government recently released guidelines for compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1998. Guess what Section 508 calls for? It says that all information technology systems deployed by federal agencies must be accessible to disabled people. The passage of this act meant that all government websites had to be adapted. SSB was ready to supply the government with the software to do the job.