Re: Development Cost

At 05:36 PM 3/9/99 -0500, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Enforcement of these guidelines and assessment of how much they cost a
>particular manufacturer to implement are both beyond the scope of the
>group as currently chartered.
>There are two reasons why I feel that the cost of implementation should
>remain an issue which is beyond the scope of this group.

I cannot agree more with what you said. By harping on these two issue we
would be limiting the amount of accessibility we could recommend authoring
tools contain or produce. Especially if we use the excuse "no one will
implement it due to the cost incurred." 

Besides, concerned individuals will always step in to help with the
enforcement of standards. Look at the Web Standards Project. They've taken
CSS 1 and HTML 4.0 and made the Web development community aware of how
unimplemented these recommendations are. Currently, Netscape is rewriting
their browser to become as compliant as possible and Microsoft has even
admitted it now recognizes Web developers as a potential client and user.

We should not limit ourselves because we think our recommendations will
interfere with a company's cost or product-to-market schedule. If the
companies do not implement our AU Recommendations, a new group will spring
up to educate the public to ask for those features or buy a different product.
--
B.K. DeLong                  360 Huntington Ave.
Director                         Suite 140CSC-305
New England Chapter     Boston, MA 02115
World Organization        (617) 247-3753
of Webmasters

http://www.world-webmasters.org
bkdelong@naw.org

Received on Tuesday, 9 March 1999 17:57:50 UTC