Ensuring access for people with disabilities to the national information infrastructure and multimedia computing

The introduction to the May, 1992 issue of"Communications of the ACM" pointed out how surprisingly large a segment of the population of the United States suffers from a disability of some sort. According to the latest census figures, 49 million U.S. citizens identify themselves as having one or more disabilities. Of those 49 million, 24 million classify themselves as severely disabled. Thus, it should come as no surprise that a recent report entitled "High Performance Computing and Communications." Toward a National Information bfrastructure" by the Office of Science and Technology Policy noted that: