Re: How to convince businesses to be accessible...

It is highly unlikely that many businesses are going to be so foolish
as to believe they will increase their business by getting rid of
graphics. Further, it is arguments such as this that are severely
impeding the acceptance and implementation of web accessibility. There
are a great many disabled folks who need and want graphics, as well as
many non-disabled folks, too. 

On Thu, 5 Oct 2000 07:52:30 -0400
> But if you broaden the argument to increased usability for all
> users, you
> may get more people to listen.  It has been documented in Jakob
> Nielsen's
> book that users don't want to wait past 10 seconds for a page to
> load, and
> can abandon a site if this doesn't happen.  I don't recall off hand
> if there
> are hard statistics attatched to this, but at least there is a
> source.  A
> sub 10 second download means light graphics, and using HTML where
> you can.

A 10 second download does not necessarily mean light graphics, it
means a speedy connection. Users who are too impatient to wait for a
download are better served by faster connection capabilities, not by
taking away the bread and butter from users who depend on the graphics
to understand the conteent of a page. 

Continuing to argue against graphics, multi-media, and other
advantages of the web over print, is to argue against the likely
acceptance of accessibility. It's time to be realistic.

                           Anne

Received on Thursday, 5 October 2000 10:29:54 UTC