The telephone and the Internet make it possible these days for many people with severe mobility difficulties to conduct much or all of their business from a home office. Some of the businesses discussed here cater to customers who have disabilities and some to a broader clientele. Having a business is one thing, having a successful business another. It may take years to get to the point of turning a profit. In some cases, it's necessary for the business owner to continue working for someone else until the business is on its feet.

BOB AND GREG TERHAAR: DESIGN CONSULTANTS

The Terhaar brothers live in Minneapolis. Bob is 36 and has used a motorized wheelchair for about 20 years. He's experienced a more severe disease progression than Greg, 32, who continues to be ambulatory.

There's some question as to which disease the brothers have, although Becker muscular dystrophy is a good bet.

What isn't under question is the Terhaars' determination to make their jointly owned business, Architectural Design & Imaging, a thriving success.

Greg has a degree in technical illustration and graphic design, while Bob has a business administration degree. Each brings unique skills to the business, although both end up being involved in all aspects.

Bob, left, and Greg Terhaar, middle, designed their own home office and use it as a showplace for prospective clients.

They have an office area in their shared accessible home. The home, which they designed, serves as a showroom to prospective clients, primarily people developing designs for their own new homes. The Terhaars believe in universal design, the notion that accessibility and ease of use are concepts that can benefit everyone and can be incorporated into all designs, whether intended for someone with a disability or not.

"About 80 percent of our clients have accessibility issues," Greg says. Accessibility features the Terhaar brothers offer include 3-foot-wide doorways to allow wheelchair access and floors built low enough to the ground to minimize the need for ramping outside the home. "It ends up being more of an incline than a ramp," Bob says. "We don't like to use ramps."

Clients will sometimes bring in their own list of desired features, some of which may conflict with each other.

Part of the process for the Terhaars involves devising a series of plans, helping clients to conceptualize how different features will look, then revising and refining as often as needed or, if necessary, even starting from scratch.

"The great thing is when you interpret someone's ideas and their needs, and turn them around into an actual blueprint that works for them," Bob says. "Usually, by the end of the project, we have a satisfied customer."

The firm has the capability to offer clients 3-D computer imaging as a design conceptualization tool. Because the process is costly, clients use this technology on a limited basis. The firm has experienced growth every year since it began in 1992. It hasn't reached the point yet of covering the cost of living and health benefits for the two brothers, so, for now, they continue to work at outside jobs.

"Bring Your Building Plans to Life" is their business motto, and the Terhaar brothers are determined to continue doing precisely that.

RALPH BRAUN: WHEELCHAIR LIFT MANUFACTURER

Ralph Braun developed wheelchair lifts in the 1960's

Ralph Braun is founder and CEO of the Braun Corporation, a pioneer manufacturer of mobility products, including a wheelchair lift, the product for which the Braun name is probably best known. The company has its headquarters in Winamac, Ind.

Ralph Braun's personal and professional history reflects, in many ways, the history of the disability rights movement, dating back to the 1960s. Braun, 59, grew up in Indiana and received a diagnosis of spinal muscular atrophy when he was about 6. He started using a wheelchair in his teens. He went to college for one semester at Indiana State University. "In those days, it was pretty tough to go to school," he says. "There was no accessibility at all."

In his early 20s, Braun got married and started raising a family. He obtained work as a quality control technician in a Singer Sewing Machine factory.

"With five kids to feed, you needed to do whatever you could do." During that time, he began his own business selling motorized wheelchairs and lifts. He started it part time so that he could continue to support the family by working at Singer. He generated awareness of his product line by writing articles for disability publications and through word of mouth.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the wheelchair lift was an innovation, one that Braun says was separately developed by him and another company at the same time.

"You'd draw a crowd showing one in a shopping center," he says of the lifts. Braun actually had full-time employees working for him before he himself took the plunge and decided to quit his job and devote himself fully to the new business.

"It was not quite thriving at first," he says. "It was something of a risk." Through articles, advertisements and demonstrations of products at the first disability trade shows in the 1970s, Braun succeeded in nurturing his new business, with help from some of the societal changes taking place in that decade.

"It was when the Vietnam veterans were coming back, many with spinal cord injuries," Braun says. The vets received financial allowances from the government that they could spend on transportation equipment.

"They were looking for transportation, and the van lifts were the latest thing at the time. It was a lot easier than dragging a wheelchair into the back seat of a Cadillac.

"We went through the gas crunch, the fuel crisis in the late '70s," Braun says. "That was something of a struggle. Nobody wanted to own a van because they burned so much fuel. In the '80s, [accessibility] laws started getting better, and with those laws came better and better sales. Because if you could get around to do things, you needed a way to get around. "The '90s definitely represented a big push. The ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] really stimulated things."

Today the Braun Corporation has well over 500 employees, including sales representatives in other countries. Braun has also realized income from real estate investing and other businesses that he's developed and sold.

Has Braun's SMA affected his business career? That's a question he finds mostly irrelevant. "I've never been "able-bodied,'" he says. "I do everything from a sitting-down, wheelchair eye line, and, to me, that's just normal. I just do whatever it takes to go about my business."

Braun's experiences have made him a sharp observer of societal changes that affect people with disabilities.

"I never used to go to a restaurant without going through the kitchen first," he recalls. Steps outside of restaurants necessitated separate wheelchair entrances, usually routed from a back or side door through the kitchen.

"Back in the early '70s, it was kitchens for everybody. Believe it or not, there are still some restaurants where they say, 'Oh, we've got the wheelchair entrance around here on the side,' and I'll say, 'Where does it go through?' and they'll say, 'Oh, the kitchen.' "Well, I'm not gonna go through the kitchen. Not anymore."

When he was young, Braun didn't receive positive encouragement from adults around him about succeeding on his own. "I had people tell me, "You'll do well off those government checks you're gonna get every month."

Braun believes some of the safety nets such as SSI that exist to protect people with disabilities are a mixed blessing. "When I was growing up, my line of thinking was I have to work my butt off all the time to be successful so I won't be homeless."

He encounters differing attitudes when attempting to hire people with disabilities. "Some of them are scared to come to work because they'll lose their benefits. And I've got other workers who don't care about their benefits. They just want to do something productive." For more on the Braun Corporation, call (800) THE-LIFT or visit its Web site at http://www.braunlift.com.

DAVID KACALA: COMPUTER DETECTIVE

David Kacala, 54, has lived his whole life in Baltimore. He's had an indeterminate neuromuscular disorder since he was a child and uses a motorized wheelchair. He's also been establishing and running businesses since he was 12 years old.

"My father used to say, "Boy, you don't have it in your feet, so you'd better have it in your brain," he says.

Computer detective David Kacala can do 100 different kinds of information searches from his home office.

"My father owned a grocery store and I handled his accounting. I figured, what the heck, if I can do it for him, I can do it for others, so I became a bookkeeping service for small retail establishments in the area. It was pocket money, $20 a week here, $25 a week there.

"I was a senior in high school when I started a contract cleaning service with my father. I ran that business on a day-to-day basis for about 15 years. Then I appointed a general manager and he ran the company for another four to five years before I sold it."

Seeing how long it took employees at the business, which performed office cleaning, to manually process the payroll gave Kacala the idea for his next business.

"It occurred to me that there's got to be a better way to do this. This was in the early '80s, way before IBM PCs [personal computers]. I had read an article in the Wall Street Journal regarding the coming craze of microprocessors and how they would make computer systems more affordable.

"We started to investigate what kind of computer system you could buy that would do functions like payroll, billing and accounting.

"We went to a computer expo. Bill Gates was there showing his operating system that he created in his garage.

"We found a computer system and I went back to school to find out how to do hardware maintenance. We basically got the system up and running for our cleaning business. And then we decided we could do this for other people and got into the computer business."

Kacala sold that company years ago and took a turn into another business, one he was able to run from his home and which he's still running today. It's a computer detecting service, called Information Search Incorporated (ISI) (www.information-search.com on the Internet).

Kacala became adept at doing criminal background checks on prospective employees for the contract cleaning business. In the Internet age, he's been able to parlay that skill into a business that performs 100 kinds of information searches for attorneys, industries and private individuals, mostly in the United States but some internationally. He estimates having well over 1,000 clients now.

Kacala seldom meets his clients face to face and most would not be aware that he has a disability. ISI is successful now, although Kacala has some concerns that Congress may make it harder to freely obtain some of the information his clients seek. He likes working out of his home.

"We just had a 20-inch blizzard; nobody got out of the house for days. So yes, it's very convenient, not having to commute."

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