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By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN

STAFF REPORTER OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

NAPERVILLE, Ill. - Don Dalton, who started Micro Overflow Corp. In his garage 3½ years ago, expects its sales to top $I million this year. His success resembles that of many entrepreneurs, with a crucial exception: He Is paralyzed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair.

When starting up Micro Overflow, Mr. Dalton relied heavily on a personal computer, operating its keyboard with a stick held In his mouth. Now, however, he runs his computer by voice. Speaking into a microphone in a headset connected to his PC, he can activate all the computer's functions, type 100 words a minute and manage the company's scheduling and finances.

And his business, a distributorship that adapts computer technology for the disabled, is helping create more disabled entrepreneurs than ever before. "I want the millions of people who are disabled and unemployed to be working for a living and be happy with themselves," he says.

Opening New Avenues

Many of the disabled are indeed finding the best hope for entrepreneurship, and rehabilitation of the disabled generally, in the huge changes Introduced by personal computers. Using PCs, the disabled can read, write, do research and interact with other people in much more sophisticated ways. Now, many of them are managing businesses in such fields as financial services, database entry, graphic design, architecture and desktop publishing.

"For many people, computers have represented the only way in which they have been able to work, given the extent of their disabilities," says Howard Shane. director of the Institute on Applied Technology, a Boston nonprofit group that does research and training on computer applications for the disabled. "Ten or 15 years ago, the same person who has a business today would simply not have been able to work. It's absolutely revolutionary.

Don Dalton

Micro Overflow helped Joanne and Bob Greenberg, both totally blind, computerize their sportscasting business, which they got started with help from contacts in the radio industry. The Greenbergs listen to radio broadcasts of sporting events and package the highlights on tape for rebroadcast on local radio stations In Philadelphia, St. Louis and Chicago.

The couple had a computer when they started their business in their Chicago home three years ago, but they say they didn't fully use it until trained by Micro Overflow last year. They now use a scanner to store printed fax transmissions, sporting news and trade directories in their computer. A computer-screen reader and synthesizer then reads the scanned documents back to them, allowing them to use printed material they can't see. Tasks such as billing and accounting, which once would have taken them hours, can now be completed in minutes.

Mr. Greenberg, who had been unemployed before starting Bob Greenberg Sports Reports, says he and his wife earn a total of about $30,000 a year.

To be sure, many disabled people, especially those born severely disabled, lack the skills needed to earn a living. But, bolstered by the Americans With Disabilities Act, which mandates workplace soccessibility for the disabled. they are feeling a growing sense of entitlement - just when the PC is expanding their abilities.

Job-Search Barriers

At the-same time, corporate downsizing and the recent recession have pushed many or them toward self-employment.

"When you're disabled, businesses won't hire you; so you have to create your own job," says Mark Eidson, who five years ago suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that left him with limited motor control and speech problems. "It's either that or lie down and die." In 1989, Mr. Eidson started MCX Inc., a San Marcos. Calif., medical billing concern that now has annual revenue of $2.5 million.

With the computer making "the playing field more even," says Urban Miyares, president of the Disabled Businesspersons Association, in San Diego, "the increase in start-ups among the disabled has been tremendous, and we're getting three times as many nquiries from disabled entrepreneurs compared to three years ago.

According to state departments of rehabilitation In Florida, New York, Texas and Illinois, requests for technical assistance from disabled business owners have been increasing. In Texas, 503 new businesses received assistance In 1992, up from 365 In 1990. In New York, 77 got help, up from 55 In 1990. The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, in New York CIty, says the number of disabled entrepreneurs it has aided has increased about 20% in the past four years.

Meanwhile, computer and telecommunications companies are producing increasingly sophisticated equipment for the disabled. For example, Blazie Engineering Inc., of Forest Hill, Md., has developed Braille 'n Speak, a $1,300 palm-top computer for the blind. The computer, designed to be held in one hand, can store up to 500 pages of text entered via a Braille keypad. The notes can then be loaded into a PC by fax modem or be reproduced with a voice synthesizer built into Braille 'n Speak.

Eyegaze, a $19,000 computer system designed by LC Technologies Inc., of Fairfax, Va., uses a video camera, located beneath a monitor, that takes 30 pictures per second of the user's eyeball to determine where on the monitor the person is looking. Displayed on the monitor is a picture of a computer keyboard that the user can manipulate by looking at a key for one-quarter of a second, or longer if the user prefers. Thus, someone able to move only one eye can operate a computer.

Arkenstone Inc., a Sunnyvale. Calif., producer of computer-reading systems, estimates the computer-reader market for blind users at $100 million a year; the systems cost about $5,000. Microsystems Software Inc., a Framingham, Mass., maker of multiple software products for disabled users, says its revenue has doubled in each of the past two years and will reach about $3 million this year.

Apple Computer Inc. has been an early leader in helping the disabled. Ever since 1984. the Cupertino, Calif., company has been exploring what PCs can accomplish. "When we began, we wanted to simply make people aware of what technology could do for disabled people," says Alan Brightman, manager of Apple's Worldwide Disability Solutions Group. "Today, a lot of the technology is there, and it is blowing away many of the myths about what disabled people can and can't do."

Destroying Myths

Destroying myths is what Mr. Dalton says he hopes to do at Micro Overflow. "When people come in here and see me with a disability, they're shocked," he says. "That's why I work with clients and don't just administer. I want them to see that they can start a business and also do anything else they want."

Mr. Dalton himself is painfully aware of the obstacles faced by many disabled people. Almost 25 years ago, he dove into the Illinois River and, hitting a submerged cable spool, broke his neck. He spent 10 months in a hospital.

"You can't imagine the impact something like that has on your life - all your hopes and dreams and plans," Mr. Dalton recalls. At 26 years of age, he was a quadriplegic with a wife and five-month old son. Confined to a wheelchair, he returned to his job as a financial manager for a car deaiership. Although warmly welcomed there, he says he felt like a burden to his co-workers. Several times a day, for example, he had to ask for help In emptying his urine bag.

After a few months, he left the dealership and opened an electronics store in 1971, even though only rudimentary job training was then available for disabled people. Personal computers didn't exist; employees had to write for him. Until he got a speakerphone, then the most advanced technology available, they also had to answer the phone and hold it up to his face. Most landlords didn't want to rent office space to him, and, anyway, most offices weren't wheelchair-accessible. Credit was difficult to arrange.

The store barely broke even but gave Mr. Dalton a sense of purpose. However, his disability created marital problems; In 1975, he and his wife were divorced. Severely depressed, he let the business slide, and two years later it closed.

Until 1983, he freelanced as an electronies consultant. Then, his interest in the recently introduced personal computers and other equipment to help the disabled led to consulting and training jobs and, later, referrals from public agencies involved in rehabilitation. Noting the increased demand among the disabled for computer training, Mr. Dalton started Micro Overflow In 1990. His son drove him to meetings with companies that designed the computer gear, and Mr. Dalton eventually became a distributor for 25 of them.

By last year, the fast-growing Micro Overflow needed new headquarters. Mr. Dalton took out a second mortgage on his home, and Jerold Borg, his former boss at the car dealership, helped line up bank loans. In March, Micro Overflow moved into a 10-room suite. The payroll has expanded to nine people, some of them disabled, too. For example, Perry Burrows, a computer programmer, has a severe reading and learning disability. And Christine Relike, who teaches the visually impaired to use computers, is visually impaired herself.

Mr. Dalton says Micro Overflow has so far trained about 1,000 disabled people. Most come from public rehabilitation agencies, but Micro Overflow also gets referrals from companies such as International Business Machines Corp. and American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

Many disabled people rely on the guidance of companies such as Micro Overflow because they have to choose among some 1,000 computer-based devices, according to the Trace Research and Development Center at the University of Wisconsin. Despite this vast array, many disabled people must jury-rig their own equipment, however.

Improving the Equipment

For example, Theodore Pinnock, who started a San Diego law firm, Pinnock & Kelso, 2½ years ago, has cerebral palsy, with a spastic left arm. For years, he relied on a contraption he made that kept the arm stable so he could use a computer keyboard. But recently, San Diego State University designed a sleeve, based on a model Mr. Pinnock created, into which both his arm and the keyboard fit. By sliding his arm along a rail inside the sleeve and above the keyboard, he can use his thumb to type legal documents and correspondence.

Although Mr. Eidson, who runs the medical billing service, calls computers his "salvation," he says he "would like a little better integration among different computers so I could use any computer I want. " Other disabled people agree. They say computer companies often pursue technological advances wihout first considering how acccessible the products will be for the disabled. As a result, many computers have to be retrofitted-adapted for people with disabilities after going on the market.

Attacking such problems, researchers at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information have been investigating ways for the disabled to use computers more easily. Their efforts, called the Archimedes Project, seek to develop a hand-held "accessor" that would use infrared and digital technology to allow the disabled to access any computer, telephone or fax machine fitted with a special port. The accessor, an alternative to a keyboard or touch-tone pad, would permit disabled users to control any of these machines vocally.

Meanwhile, Mr. Dalton continues to spread the word about computers and self-employment. At least two days a week, he and his marketing director, James Roller, travel around Illinois to drum up business and meet with clients.

One client, Diana Berti, can't talk and has little physical dexterity as a result of cerebral palsy. So, Mr. Dalton and his colleagues bolted a laptop computer to a tray on her electric wheelchair and attached a voice synthesizer beneath. They also designed a software package that allows her to write and to do arithmetic by choosing words, phrases and numbers from a menu on the computer screen.

By pressing a small pad on her tray, Ms. Berti can move the computer's cursor and construct sentences. When they are completed, she can press a key that activates the voice synthesizer. So, for the first time in her life, the 39-year-old Ms. Berti can "speak." During a recent visit to Micro Overflow, Ms. Berti demonstrated her new ability by telling Mr. Dalton: "I can do checkbooks first time in my life. I cannot live without my computer. I'm really happy that Don fight for me."