Wall Street Journal - December 15, 1999

People With Disabilities Are Next Consumer Niche

By JOSHUA HARRIS PRAGER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Handicapitalism.

It's a brand-new term that describes what's behind a dawning realization
in business: People with disabilities shouldn't be viewed as charity
cases or regulatory burdens, but rather as profitable marketing targets.
Now, mainstream companies, from financial services to cell-phone makers,
are going beyond what's mandated by law and rapidly tailoring products
to attract them.

A new training video from Norwest Mortgage Inc., a unit of Wells Fargo &
Co. in Des Moines, Iowa, details a number of products it offers,
including vehicle-conversion loans and home-modification loans
especially for the disabled. The video, a call to arms for its sales
force, offers a stark rationale: "Fact: People with disabilities have
money!"

In 1995, according to the latest available census figures, there were
about 48.5 million people 15 and older with disabilities in the U.S.,
with annual discretionary income totaling $175 billion. With last
month's passing of the Work Incentives Improvement Act, a bill expected
to funnel tens of thousands of disabled people into the work force,
their purchasing power will only grow.

Already, businesses are becoming more direct in their appeals. "We've
been called gimp, cripple, and our new favorite, retard," begins an ad
heralding the recent launch of wemedia.com, an Internet portal that
posts wheelchair-accessible real-estate listings and links to employment
services that specialize in placing job seekers with disabilities. "You
can start calling us Mr. and Mrs. $1 trillion in consolidated buying
power."

"If this were charity, I wouldn't bother," says Cary Fields, president
and chief executive officer of wemedia, whose corporate partners include
HotJobs.com Ltd., a job-search site. "These people are here," he adds.
"If you want their money, go deal with them."

More companies are raising their profiles among people with
disabilities. Johnson & Johnson sponsored a few sessions at last year's
annual convention of the Society for Disability Studies. Earlier this
year, the company launched Independence Technology, a unit that will
produce and market products for people with disabilities. Johnson &
Johnson has invested more than $100 million in the company, whose first
product is the IBOT Transporter, an all-terrain wheelchair.

DaimlerChrysler AG's Dodge brand and Barnes & Noble Inc. have agreed to
sponsor AdaptZ.com, another one-stop shop for the disability community,
launched last month. And, in the past year, more than 100 companies
including Nike Inc., Pfizer Inc. and portal site Snap.com have aired
commercials featuring people with disabilities, according to Advertising
Age magazine.

Some of the activity has been spurred by federal regulations. In
November 1998, Olli Kallasvuo, chief financial officer of Finnish
cell-phone company Nokia Corp., sent a letter to employees about the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, which mandated that companies in the
U.S. ramp up access to technology for people with disabilities. "Passage
of this law presents a tremendous opportunity for Nokia," he wrote.
"Enhancing our accessible product line ... offers Nokia the opportunity
to reach a developing global market of almost 750 million people with
disabilities."

For people with hearing problems, Nokia sells phones that flash or
vibrate. It also offers a "loopset," a wire with a microphone in it that
hangs around a person's neck and plugs into a hearing aid.

'Sticky Keys'

More companies are forming in-house disability teams. Last year, for
example, Microsoft Corp. created its Accessibility and Disabilities
Group, with more than 40 researchers, marketers and product developers.
The group has engineered such products as a mouse that is less sensitive
to tremors. For people who can't press several keys at once, Microsoft
makes "sticky keys" configured to hit control, alt and delete keys, say,
with a single stroke.

Accessibility enhancements can be as simple as varying colors. People
with vision problems, for instance, are aided by contrasts. "The cost of
white plastic is the same as gray plastic," says Jim Tobias, president
of Inclusive Technologies, consultants on technology and disability, in
Matawan, N.J. "And a few more million people will be able to use it."

Several years ago, Bell Atlantic Corp. launched an in-house market
research project on people with disabilities. The company determined
that the market was ripe for such assistive devices as light-flashing
caller-IDs and voice mail that alerts people to take their medicine.

Last year, Bob Baublitz, Bell Atlantic's first manager of marketing to
the disability community, led the launch of an accessibility Web site
touting Bell Atlantic's disability-friendly products. Earlier this year,
BellSouth Corp. advertised its services in three disability-oriented
magazines.

Bell Atlantic won't disclose its sales figures but says the products are
selling well. "They're just scooping them up," says Marilyn Benoit,
manager of Bell Atlantic's center for customers with disabilities. "This
was a very good business decision."

Indeed, handicapitalism (a term that Johnnie Tuitel, a lecturer with a
disability, is seeking to trademark) has nothing to do with regulatory
change or the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act, passed in 1990.
That law, which mandated that companies treat people with disabilities
in an evenhanded way and make "reasonable accommodations," prompted
companies to install wheelchair ramps for workers and hire interpreters
for deaf employees, among other things.

Still, pinpointing what is considered legally "reasonable" remains
tricky. Last month, the National Federation of the Blind sued America
Online Inc., alleging that it violated the federal disabilities law by
being inaccessible to blind users. The Baltimore group's complaint
charged that AOL's software doesn't work with computer programs that
dictate text and otherwise help blind people operate applications and
Web sites.

"It would be more productive to everyone if we could deal with this as a
technology issue and not a legal issue," says Tricia Primrose, an AOL
spokeswoman. She says that the next version of AOL's software will be
screen-reader-compatible and so accessible to people with visual
impairments.

Other advocates for the disability community say they prefer products
and services to be spurred by profit potential, not by compliance. And
targeting people with disabilities for purely altruistic reasons "isn't
going to get the return on investment," says Cheryl Duke, president of
W.C. Duke Associates Inc., a disability-consulting firm in Woodford, Va.
"If you do it because it's a moneymaking project, it will continue."


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