The paper deals with the possibilities of enhancing independent living strategies through access to information for people with disabilities. It analyses the existing information resources and announces a new project that has been launched recently in Saratov, Russia. The theme is important because currently people with disabilities are lacking information about their rights (Smirnova, Wagner, Blackorby), about help and support they can get, about the ways to apply their knowledge and skills, to share and disseminate their experience (Antes 1997).

People with disabilities in Russia are excluded from social life. They have very limited access to such important things as education, jobs, recreation, that the rest of society takes for grantd. Advanced communication technologies, including Internet can solve many problems of the disabled. While it would not be a realistic task for students of the university to solve this problem once and for all, it is possible to organize the assistance for some people with disabilities. The paper considers activities under a new project for people with disabilities, entitled "ACTAD - Advanced Communication Technologies Access for the Disabled".

Internet stores the information in seemingly every field. We've searched information in the Internet by the search engines. We explored the structure and information contents of the searching engines and the accessibility of Internet resources dealing with disabled children problems, offering decisions of these problems, containing analytical and teaching materials (Petchenkina). These resources are presented mostly by the sites created in the West, for the citizens of the western states.

The key phrases are given in inverted commas for the search engines to look for the documents and sites containing all their components.

The information portal "Lycos" proved to be the leader among the Western systems in the numbers of documents found on the key-phrases queries.

Table 1. The numbers of key-words queries.

Let's characterize the links given by the search engines in the context of our research. Let's consider the most frequent topics of e-resources.

Russian-language resources pay much attention to the information on the Russian law structure (housing, working, civil), on the financing on social services. There are some details on the provision of transport benefits, medicine and health, education benefits.

This kind of information resource may be illustrated by the example of the site at ts.vpk.ru/www-vpk/minek/program/fcp/2/index.htm, providing the information on "Disabled Children" Federal program: its concept, financing, budget, and results.

The similar information is provided also by the Russian site www.invalid.ru. It has a list if e-links on medical and social problems. There is also an interactive chat, a notice-board, which is very important for the sick children and specialists

Among the foreign sites with the complete coverage of the problem the search engines give out the links to non-profit organization "New Jersey Pediatric Net" (the USA) at njpeds.cjb.net. There are also the links to "JJDP" organization at ojjdp.ncjrs.org, the site of "Easter Seals Services" at www.essc.org, the site providing children and family support at www.hhs.state.ne.us/chs/chd/chdindex.htm. These and other sites distributed by their geography, offer information services of comparable range � the links to related sites, diverse information, news, newsboards, the users lists wishing to communicate by e-mail or chat.

The Russian site www.concept.com.ru/law/law03/law03-90.html offers information on the specific features of local legislation on the defense of children's rights in Ekaterinburg Region. We think the publication of information of this kind is necessary to make easier the process of obtaining this information and the information reaching the widest audience possible.

The Russian Internet features in detail the special program "Disabled Children" of the Omsk Region,. Its site contains the information on family support and social services (www.trecom.tomsk.su/koi/asdg/Bms/text/7/IOS9870R.TXT). This program is represented by a set of diverse resources at different addresses, possibly at different servers (e.g., govtomsk.trecom.tomsk.su). The region's activity in this sphere and the use of new technologies is proved by the information placed on the net about the TV -marathon raising funds to support disabled children, which took place in June 2000 (www.omsk.ru/marathon/index.html).

Although there's much information about the organizations and events concerning the disabled children, there's an obvious lack of sites on medical, analytical aspects of this problem in the Russian Internet. For example, this information is offered by the children's ecological center "Zhivaja nit'" (The Living Thread) and Moscow disabled jockeys' club at www.hippotherapy.ru/materials/book1/page4.htm. These site features the teaching materials translated from the foreign languages into Russian on the use of horses in the process of medical and social rehabilitation of disabled children.

Here are the basic conclusions of our Internet research.

• We have not found the information resources made by disabled persons for disabled. There are many resources on Federal programs, but only a few are about the non-profit organizations of people with disabilities, and there aren't sites about non-profit sports organizations of disabled persons.
• The important problems for disabled in WWW space are the accessibility of Internet resources and navigation. There is special consortium W3C, responsible for the standards of documents, to improve the accessibility to all users, especially the disabled persons (Web Accessibility Initiative, http://www.w3c/org/wai/). Currently the primary output for the WWW is highly visual: using text, pictures and graphic symbols, with a growing use of sound files and motion pictures. Current WWW data structures need to modified to include additional information for alternative presentation in formats that include audio, pictorial, text or tactile presentation. As users with disabilities explore information on the WWW they must have access to the information they are exploring in a form that is capable with their perceptual and cognitive capabilities (Antes 1998, Gunderson).
• The format of WWW pages is typically fixed by the source of the information and if the user needs presentation in a different form there are currently few ways for the user to translate the information. Therefore information on the WWW must be structured for multiple presentation formats. Text information needs the capability to be viewed as either text, speech, Braille or any other user selected combination. For example, there are sites with alternative ways of information representation: text and graphic versions of WEB pages (www.staffs.ac.uk/services/student_support/disabled.htm - Staffordshire University Student Support Web Pages).

Our project has title "ACTAD - Advanced Communication Technologies Access for the Disabled". We are students of social work and social anthropology programs at Saratov State Technical University who decided to help one of disabled people groups in our town. This group is sports society for people with disabilities, which is entitled "Spartak". This organization is non-profit organization and one of the few organizations in Saratov, which allows members to live interesting, active and full lives. They often go out of Saratov to take part in sports competitions in fishing.

The main goals of our project are:

• To learn about the opportunities of information technologies, and recommendations on improvement the access to e-resources.
• To develop of e-resource for disabled sports club in Saratov. This e-resource will represent this sports club.
• To engage the disabled persons in teamwork.
• To develop of the information environment in the Internet for members of sports club "Spartak".
• To engage students, faculty, researchers to volunteer in the development of the resource.

A founder of this club Yury Kazakov rendered assistance to us. He told us all about needs of club, problems of this sport society, and about possible ways of solutions of these problems. Yuri Kazakov took active part in creation of information resource. Currently we work with sports club members together.

The resource we've created http://sar-spartak.narod.ru/ addresses the problems of people with disabilities. Development of information content and data structure included interviews with Yuri Kazakov, meetings with other members of sports club, looking into the problems together with disabled, writing of articles about these problems. We interviewed some club's members, who have succeeded in their lives (for example, Alexei (28) graduated from the Law Academy).

The main page of our Website has links to pages: News, Events, Personal Information, Analytical materials, Links.

• News - latest information about the club.
• Events - information about the club's events. There are the photohraphs illustrating two last club's competitions: summer and winter fishing.
• Personal information - E-mail addresses and contact information of club's director, club's members, WEB master.
• Analytical materials - some articles on theme "Ways to Independent life for disabled persons in Russia " are collected in this section.
• Links - links to related WEB sites.

When we developed structure of information, we took into account recommendations of a consortium W3C. The main page has the link to special page, which represents access to the text version of an information resource. This version does not contain graphics and tables. This special version will provide alternative access to information for disabled who use special devices and software (Dee Dio, King) for viewing contents of an Internet.

During the first stage of project we have analyzed a large number of Internet resources devoted to the problems of disabilities and discovered that the vast majority of such sources are arranged in the West, about the West and for the West.

On the second stage of our research work we have been engaged with non-governmental organization for the disabled - the sport society "Spartak", interviewing its leader and members about the needs and perspectives.

Right now, the third stage of the project includes creation of web-site as a means of providing to the general public information about this society, its members, services and events provided. At the same time, the web-site and mailing list will operate as a means of advertising of sport society. It will be possible to attract attention of national and international sport groups for the disabled and receive accurate information in proper time about the important events and opportunities. Web site will contain biographies of sport club's members, presentation of their professional experience and abilities. We hope that Web site will attract new members from Saratov, who so far do not know about the club. In the future it may also serve for international exchange because it will contain information in English. It is hoped that it will encourage exchange of ideas and stimulate further development of organization and active involvement of new members.

The next stage will be devoted to the evaluating and running of the web-site. In the future it will bring together much of the information needed to enable anyone interested in the rights of disabled people to work for those rights. It will be one of the few first web-sites run for disabled and by disabled in Russian language.

We employed an action research perspective in our work. It means that we are not only studying the problem, we also are solving it.