Re: Updated again: "Web Accessibility is Smart Business" Presentation

Ian,

Thanks for the response. I guess my point is why not have three slide decks:


   - One to excite the a11y workers
   - One to get HR and Corp management to go further and implement training
   to their staff
   - One for Engineers


I for one believe all of the data in the slide and I think (based on
experience) SEO needs to be included. However, in my experience, american
business looks for a reason to exclude not include an expense, does that
make sense?
And if you can get data and if it satisfies validation, I would be happy to
work with the team to submit a scientific paper on the same. - at the end of
the day the base numbers hiding detail from the developer should be enough.

Cheers,
Rob


On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 6:35 PM, Ian Pouncey <w3c@ipouncey.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi Rob,
>
> To reiterate the context of the quote, I did not include it because it
> was Peter's opinion alone, I included it because a member of the team
> that worked on the redevelopment at L&G, who had access to the numbers
> (see the other slide I referenced), felt it summed up the results.
>
> Even though you are probably correct in your analysis of the quote in
> the context of Robert's post alone, I think this takes it from
> anecdotal to an eloquent expression of the outcome that the developers
> involved derived from the numbers at their disposal. See it as a quote
> from the people involved that just happened to be written by someone
> else!
>
> Maybe we need to include the numbers from Mike Davies slide deck to
> support the claim. If this would solve the problem people have with
> its inclusion I am happy to ask Mike for permission to use his slide
> on EOWG's behalf.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ian.
>
> On 11 April 2011 15:31, Robert Yonaitis <ryonaitis@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello All,
> >
> > I think Peter (Abrahams) accurately writes about what he "believes",
> > However, This slide deck is a educational piece and while many
> accessibility
> > experts have total faith in the assessments that does not make the
> > assertions fact as presented. I have worked in Accessibility and A11y
> > Education and Outreach for over a decade and it strikes me that when we
> lead
> > with our faith & beliefs on a education / outreach piece we leave more to
> be
> > explained then learned. While we can discuss this stuff it is not
> something
> > that we should present as fact, unless we have facts.
> >
> > I remember talking to a friend in Madrid, William (Loughborough), and he
> > noticed no old people going into the Prado. Based on this he identified
> that
> > this should lead us to more research, anecdotal evidence is not bad it
> > should get us thinking, we identified some bad things and some good
> things
> > and if I know William he then presented his ideas to the museum. So
> please
> > do not think I believe Anecdotal evidence is bad - in fact it does get us
> > thinking, innovating and should be a starting point for more research. So
> > when thinking of this article, that Peter wrote, think of a graduate
> > research paper. If you delivered that article as a research paper you
> would
> > not do very well as there are no sources and it stresses faith versus
> fact.
> >
> > William discussed a council of elders and I wonder if that ever happened
> at
> > the W3C  as it would have been a good thing. I think from this slide deck
> > there also may be anecdotal evidence that the group can benefit from non
> > A11y business people contributing. There would have a different take on
> the
> > slides. The slides lean heavily toward business terms but does not rise
> to
> > the level of business data that a CEO/Business Unit Leader would need to
> > make a decision. In business meetings or when presenting to a board you
> peer
> > through every slide and you think of what slide will allow them to
> dismiss
> > the idea, how many of these slides would give someone the excuse to
> dismiss
> > the entire presentation until there was more data?
> > In the end I do believe there should be a central goal to this slide
> deck,
> > "do no harm" perhaps everything this groups does should lean toward this
> > lofty goal. The information presented should be beyond question and it
> > should grow the belief, based on facts, in developing accessible (to
> people
> > that do not currently do so or are on the fence) and never contribute to
> the
> > people who come up with reasons to ignore the moral and social need, in
> my
> > opinion, to make their content and applications accessible.
> > As I said in a previous mail I believe the slide deck is a tweak or two
> away
> > from achieving what I assumed its goals were. I just wanted to make sure
> > that I was very clear on why I disagreed with the use of the anecdotal
> data.
> > If we believe this Anecdotal information is so important perhaps we need
> to
> > assign a research team to get together real data, write a paper and
> submit
> > it to peers on ACM (http://www.acm.org/) to get it properly vetted and
> > published so we can refer to it. Again, thank you for your time.
> > Cheers,
> > Rob Yonaitis
> > http://www.facebook.com/yonaitis
> >
> >> All of these statistics are excellent and can be seen to have a direct
> >> effect on the profitability of Legal & General which far outweighed
> >> the expenditure and demonstrate excellent return-on- investment (ROI).
> >> Peter Abrahams, Bloor Research
> >>
> >> Unless we want a debate about separation of 'accessibility' and
> >> 'usability' (and I hope we don't!) I think that the stats justify
> >> including the reference in this presentation.
> >
>



-- 
Rob Yonaitis
http://www.yonaitis.com/ | http://twitter.com/ryonaitis