• Ladyslipper Music Online
  
  
• Electronic Curb Cuts
  & Virtual Stairs
  
  

The Ladyslipper Music website:
http://www.ladyslipper.org
contains over 1700 reviews of music titles, 1400 sound clips, graphics, online ordering and artists’ pages. The site is a perfect resource for locating music by women, learning about the musical works of women and purchasing music that you sample online. Celebrating our 20th birthday as a print mail-order catalog, we realized there was a new medium for us to learn about, which could supplement the half-million print catalogs we mail out annually. The publication of the website was the culmination of a year of planning and learning about the structure of the Internet, the business of the Internet and about how to place a business on the Internet.

My interest in computers began in 1980, while still in law school, when Westlaw Publications announced its online computer search capabilities that would assist in a task that was boring and timeconsuming. Later, I began to be connected to the Internet by signing onto CompuServe and visiting the forums and then I stepped out into a new universe of the World Wide Web. Several years ago, the reality of the importance of Ladyslipper being on the Internet crystallized as I logged onto the Internet from my law office located deep in the woods of Efland, North Carolina, and was able to visit the law library in Cornell University, a library in Germany and the law library in California, all with a local telephone call and all within minutes. Ladyslipper was founded by Laurie Fuchs, in 1976, so that information about women’s music could be available. With a Website, the valuable information about music by women could be shared around the world.

I worked on the Website project as a volunteer for Ladyslipper with Laurie Fuchs, the director, gathering information about various Internet providers and getting quotes from various sources for placing the "catalog online" from several different people. With each quote of $50,000 to $80,000 to put us online, we became more determined to get there on our own terms. As I read about the various software packages that were available to produce the pages that appear on the Internet, I realized that many people on the Internet were self-taught. Many freeware and shareware programs were readily available on CompuServe, and the forums were filled with people having the same problems I was having learning programs. I began to download and learn the various programs and I found people in the forums and computer stores friendly, ready, willing and more that able to assist as we leaped various hardware and software hurdles.

There were countless days and endless hours of reading and trying programs and eventually an idea for the Ladyslipper online catalog began to take shape. We knew that we had several goals for the Website: that the information be available world wide; that visitors could order the music from Ladyslipper online; that the print catalog be made available online. And we wanted to establish an email list that would provide new product information on a continual basis.

Armed with information about Internet Service Providers (ISP), telephone connections, and software programs for Internet website production, we were better able to evaluate proposals as we began to negotiate with various producers for the production of the Website. We selected an ISP, implemented an e-mail service, and selected a production group that would produce the Website. Our production group selection was based on their willingness to work with us and the agreement that we would produce parts of the Website. We were able to produce the header art work for sections of the catalog and to scan album covers that appear as gifs and jpegs, thus reducing significantly the cost of production. All of the art work, gifs and jpegs were "zipped" and transported through Compuserve’s FTP services to our producer’s computer located several counties away. As the catalog developed, the producer would put "test" catalogs online, we would view the site, test it and make changes. After our initial meeting, the catalog production occurred online, by email, telephone and fax. In June of 1996, we officially published the site and were thrilled when we got several hundred hits and our first order.

Advertising the site was the next hurdle. Once again, I returned to the Web for information about ways to developed traffic and an online business. Days online were spent looking for sites that might give us a link, newsgroups that discussed music or anything related to Ladyslipper, and sites that published information about music, women’s issues, and lesbian and gay issues and entertainment. The Website was placed on all the search engines, posted in directories and listed at various sites, and traffic began to pick up. When we first publicized the site in our print catalog, the traffic at the site jumped significantly and our online ordering began to increase. We constantly monitor the site by studying reports that tell us where our traffic is coming from. We can determine types of links that send us traffic and work on connecting with other similar sites.

I was surprised by the amount of work that went into the production of the site and I continue to be amazed at the possibilities for business development that unfold. We are getting about 150,000 hits per month, orders are continuing to grow as users get more comfortable with online ordering, our email list grows each day, (it reached about 1000 in only a few months), and we receive daily requests for the print catalog. As we receive orders for music and catalogs from Tokyo, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Germany, we realize we are getting our information out to the world. We reached many of the goals we set for the project; and now we have set new goals for the future.

We look forward to improving the site, and the services online and to developing partnerships with other online organizations that are mutually beneficial. Our hope for the future is to preserve all the past Ladyslipper catalogs, graphics and sound in an online archive that will be available for researchers, and to expand the visibility of the body of music by women. Our success with the site is the result of making a decision to proceed with the project and then making a commitment to reach our goals. We never gave up, never stopped when obstacles appeared, and we received enormous support and assistance from wonderful people who have placed Ladyslipper links at their sites and talked positively about the site in print and online publications. The Internet was there to provide us with valuable information about every aspect of the project. We were able to take advantage of that information, educate ourselves about issues critical to the development of the project, and then take action necessary to complete the work. The great thing about the Internet is that it levels the playing field. There are no race, gender, age or other "ism" issues, just information waiting to be cultivated and turned into productivity.

For more information about Ladyslipper contact Laurie@ladyslipper.org

Email: MLHartsell@compuserve.com

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A friend of mine, who is a blind woman, showed me a cartoon on her desk, maybe the only "printed matter" in her whole office. It was a now-famous cartoon of a two animals using the computer with the caption under it, "On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog". My friend used to run the disability list for the World Institute on Disability called WIDnet before moving to her new job in New York. She knows more than most people how the Internet can provide access and advantages to people with disabilities. Because most blind computer users have technology that translates data from electronic signals to either braille or synthesized voice, the Internet gives them access to an incredible amount of information that was once ONLY accessible for sighted people because it was only available in print.

When you join a use group or list serve and contribute stories or comments and read those created by others, there are no tell tale signs that any one of you is using a screen reader, are is typing with one hand or using a stick to hit the keys. When people are given alternative input devices to hit the keyboard or compose sentences the time it takes to make those movements is not recorded. The only time a person’s disability might be noticeable on line is in "real time", IRC or chat rooms. Even then, poor typers, hesitant newbies and shy people could have the same typing speed as a person using a suck and blow device to select letters for input. On the Internet, no one knows you are disabled. Or they don’t have to know, unless you want them to know.

Much like the now common gender bending and dragging done by changing identities and life histories on the Net, people with disabilities can create an identity that disguises blindness, deafness, physical disability or other significant difference. However, the opposite is also true. As "invisible" minorities such as lesbians and sexual abuse survivors find ways to connect on the Net, so too do people with disabilities. Sometimes the discussion or information is about living with a disability, other times it is about life in general. The members of use groups or list serves or visitors to web-sites that are disability specific are not embarassed to have a disability. In fact they are celebrating it and searching for others with similar experiences. The Internet is a chance to meet thousands of others who might never have been met without access to this endless stream of data. For women with disabilities it is an incredible chance to connect with others and reduce isolation. That is, if she has access to a computer, a modem, time, and she can read and write.

The one danger that many women with disabilities notice about the Net is the need for literacy. Or rather, the fact that illiterate women have so restricted access to both reading and contributing via the Internet. Human interaction and verbal exchange was one way that women with significant learning or cognitive disabilities could overcome their inability to read. Deaf women had sign language interpreters to put their signed communication into English. On the Internet, your language is your voice. Even those women with basic reading skills find it hard to deal with the overwhelming amount of information on the Net. We need to work together, both as women Internet users and people with disabilities, to ensure that there are no virtual stairs thrown in our paths as we roll along this information highway. Women who don’t read well may be able to use the pictures, images and icons but these create barriers to women who are blind and only get the "text" translated by their equipment.

In virtual terms, the DATA itself can be accessible to anyone if the human’s who design Web sites and Internet services are sensible and create universal access.

The electronic curb cuts should be built in ahead of time and not added on after the problem is noticed. Text only versions of Web sites are also more accessible to those of us who access the Web via community freenets which do not process images, only text. In some ways, the pictures and icons make access easier for people who don’t read but it in no way duplicates or replaces the masses of text based information that is available. As text to speech and speech to text technology becomes more affordable and more accurate, women who cannot type, or cannot read or write will be better able to participate in the Net life.

Vicky D"Aoust is a Deaf mom with a Deaf teenager, who researches and writes about disability and women’s issues, in between using the Internet and watching xfiles. The truth is probably out there (but its not on TV). Vicky is on the freenet at UD944@freenet.victoria.bc.ca

CAL-WILD

Started just after some women with disabilities returned from Beijing, CAL-WILD (California - Women’s International Linkage on Disability) is an example of how women are using the Internet to support each other and the movement of women with disabilities. While coordinated from a Californian base, the list serve reaches women in several countries (including Canada!) and can be used to distribute information about upcoming events, protests, research efforts or current issues experienced by women with disabilities. There are many other disability related sources of information but not many specific to women with disabilities. To subscribe send message to cal-wild@igc.org

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