RE: URGENT: Help

The biggest expense in creating an accessible Web site is changing attitudes
- the rest is negligible. I recently worked with a Web design contractor. He
already knew good Web design practices so it took him a total of 1 hour of
studying the www.w3.org/wai guidelines to be fully conversant in accessible
Web design. 

David.
______________________________
David A. Bolnick, Ph.D.
Accessibility Product Manager: Government and Legislation
Producer: Microsoft Enable Productions
(http://microsoft.com/enable/productions/)
Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA  98052
Tel: 425-936-8342    Page: 888-899-0841    Fax: 425-936-7329   Cell:
206-660-3054
E-mail: davebo@microsoft.com     Web: http://microsoft.com/enable


 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Francisco Godinho [mailto:f.godinho@mail.telepac.pt] 
Sent:	Friday, July 23, 1999 3:54 AM
To:	WAI Interest Group
Cc:	guia.pasig@bigfoot.com; Dolphin - Neill McBride; Hadar - Hans
Sundstrõm; CAPS - Luis Azevedo; IBM - SNS - Phill Jenkins; IBM - SNS - Jim
Thatcher; IBM - Robert B. Mahaffey; Javier Romañach; Alexis Donnelly;
Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y R.; Francisco Antonio Soeltl; Hadar - Jens Hansen;
SIVA - Massimo Ferrario; WAI - Judy Brewer; Ricardo Silva; Gary Moulton;
David Bolnick; NCAM - Larry Goldberg; NCAM - Geoff Freed; Robert Neff; SIVA
- Renzo Andrich; Sun - Earl Jonhson; Sylvie Duchateau; Waddell, Cynthia
Subject:	URGENT: Help
Importance:	High

Dear friends,

The Portuguese law about web accessibility is ready to be
approved or rejected by the Government in few days.

This law, in Portugal, could be very important to
web accessibility in Europe and Brazil.

However, there is one question that is crucial for the decision:
Some members of the Government think that
accessible web authoring is expensive and difficult.

I have 24 hours to summarize some arguments
(one page) to overcome this lack of information.
I would be grateful if you could help me today.

In the W3C/WAI FAQs, I  found some arguments:

9. Does it cost more to make a site accessible?
http://www.w3.org/1999/05/WCAG-REC-fact.html#text

Designing a new site to be accessible should not add significantly to
development cost. Some aspects of accessibility, such as use of style
sheets, can actually reduce the costs of maintaining or updating sites, and
this benefit should increase over time as style sheets are more evenly
implemented in browsers and available as an authoring strategy in authoring
tools.

For existing sites, the ease or difficulty of making sites accessible
depends on a variety of factors, including the size of a site, the
complexity of a site, and the authoring tool that was used to make a site.
Periodic upgrades or reviews of sites can be good opportunities to review
the accessibility of sites. When compared with the broader audience that a
site is available to, and the greater usability for other users as well,
accessible sites can be cost-effective.
[end]

I think that I need more arguments.

Should I alert for the production's cost of alternative formats
like braille or audio tapes  ?

Thank you for your help
Francisco Godinho
Co-coordinator of the Petition for the Accessibility of the Portuguese
Internet
PASIG - Portuguese Accessibility Special Interest Group
http://www.acessibilidade.net/index_eng.html

Received on Friday, 23 July 1999 12:40:45 UTC