by Danny Gregory

For the rest of the summer, I juggled hospital visits and long, lonely nights at home with Jack, our 10-month-old son. In addition to feeling sad, exhausted, and scared, I was lost and lonely. What was to become of us? What would our lives be like? Would we survive? Would life ever be normal again? Though Patti was getting therapy, support, and medical attention at the hospital, I was alone and adrift. But one evening I typed the word "paralysis" into Yahoo and started the long haul back to terra firma.

Every day I gathered more bookmarks. This was dozens of Web years ago and disability resources were just starting to appear. But every day I found more. Then I got onto a mailing list called Teamwork, and started having daily conversations about and with people in wheelchairs. Some of my new acquaintances were freshly injured, others had contracted polio forty years ago. They gave me hope, answered my questions, and sent me prayers. I will always remember Tom telling me about his wife Sue, who had been struck down by polio in the '50s. Now she uses a hot pink wheelchair, and they drive their RV on vacations all over the country. They love to dance, particularly to country music. And here I'd thought Patti and I would never go dancing again.

Of major interest to me was contacting mothers in wheelchairs. Because spinal cord injury is often an active young man's disability, moms were hard to find, particularly those coping successfully with small kids. But soon I had gathered a handful together and they offered hope and encouragement to Patti, now back from the hospital and trying to navigate the Real World once again.

My list of bookmarks continued to grow, and I started to discover that I was now able to answer questions for others. When people had a need, I often had a URL for them. What was originally a section on my homepage called "The Hub for Information for People in Wheelchairs" became its own site. I publicized it on various search engines, then found it was getting reviewed.

Magellan gave it four stars, it excited Excite.com, and YPN.com said:

Finally, a Web page that doesn't appear to have been designed by a brain in a jar. Featuring elegant artwork and a prolific set of links on everything from sports to sex, the Hub is quite possibly the most important resource for "wheeling" computer-users.

I was glad people liked the Hub and hoped it was helpful, but something critical was still missing for me. Every day I got half a dozen e-mails from visitors, but nothing replicated the community feeling I'd gotten from Teamwork. I had a sense that I was letting down a lot of the people who were writing to me. Even though I was a self-proclaimed Webmaster, I didn't really have much expertise in the world of wheelchairs... I don't even use one! I knew that for every question I got, there were dozens of long-timers out there who could answer them. But how to get them all together? And how to make the experience fun?

The Hub was like a coffee machine, dispensing information one cup at a time. Now how to turn it into a coffee shop, where people could drop in to get something they needed, but stay for the social interaction? My fantasy site was something that could only exist in cyberspace: a great café just for people in wheelchairs. "Cheers" for gimps.

The biggest obstacle was the Internet Channel, my hosting service. They refused to let me run a PERL script on the site without paying an exorbitant amount of money, so I couldn't host a bulletin board. I also had no sense of where people were coming from and what they were interested in. I begged for feedback from visitors, but that was asking too much. So, at the beginning of this summer, I decided to get serious. I moved to a new service provider, Hiway Technology, and registered my own domain name. I wanted an address that would clue disabled people into the fact that my site has an insider's POV and a sense of humor. Anybody in a chair will tell you that an unrelenting curb can spell a dead end to independence — so I called it 'curbcut.com'. It was time for an accessible entrance to the Internet.

In the past three months, curbcut.com has received 65,000 hits from everywhere from Australia to Yugoslavia. I still get mail every day but the bulletin board has hundreds of postings, often from repeat visitors. I make an effort to write to everyone who posts, thanking them for getting involved and reminding them that if they post a question it would be nice if they tried to answer someone else's post. Patti has made at least one really good friend from the board, another mom with a similar injuries and little kids.

Disabled people are incredibly helpful to each other. When you've had to learn to cope, you aren't territorial about your experience and information. You're eager to share. (I think that spirit has always been at the heart of the Net, and no amount of large, faceless corporate Web sites can change that.) One key area of the Hub is a consumer report for wheelchairs. Patti has had the same chair for two years and the sidewalks of New York have dinged it up quite a bit. But when it came time to shop for a new one, we were clueless. There are dozens of manufacturers, each with dozens of models. Knowing which ones are really reliable, comfortable, and easy to maneuver, and which manufacturers are responsible and helpful can change one's life. Now, as every visitor posts a review of his or her own chair, or describes their chair-shopping experience, we are developing a useful database (plus contacts for further questions) that has already impacted several buyers' decisions. The next step will be to let chair manufacturers in on the discussion, so they can hear from their customers first-hand. We are also gathering resources for discounted chairs and for programs that send used chairs to people in the Third World.

Another practical issue is housing design: By sharing plans, shortcuts, resources, and experiences, curbcut.com is helping community members make their homes better places for independent living. Vacation planning is also a big topic. Finding out how to navigate around distant places, disability-sensitive hotels, attitudes towards wheelchairs in other countries, the best way to put a chair on a plane... the topics are endless. Visitors from around the world can even swap homes for vacations abroad.

Curbcut.com has changed my perspective a lot. Two years ago, I'd never spoken to anyone in a wheelchair. Never: They were the "Other." Now I number many of them as my friends. By hearing about so many different issues every day, I am able to understand and help my own wife more. I have learned that I can make a difference, and that in itself is its own reward.

I like to think that curbcut.com is an accessible place, in the sense that it's friendly, down-to-earth, and supportive. I've tried to make the site upbeat and life-affirming through my graphics, design, site annotations, and writing. I want to promote the notion that a wheelchair is not a ball and chain, that one can still change the world for the better while sitting down. I want people to look on the bright side, to be motivated and move ahead. And if, today, someone else finds themselves sitting alone in a child's bedroom with tears in their eyes and a zillion questions rattling around in their skulls, I hope they find their way to curbcut.com. I'll be there. And so will my friends.

Danny Gregory is a creative director at a large advertising agency and lives with his wife, son and dog in a wheelchair accessible apartment in the heart of New York's Greenwich Village. He can be reached at [email protected].