Appendix E: Cost Considerations for Business Case

Note: This document is an initial draft [see change log in progress] and should not be referenced or quoted under any circumstances. This document is under development by the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG), and will be offered to other W3C groups and the public for review.

Introduction

This appendix to "Customizing a Business Case and Implementation Plan for Web Accessibility" presents analyses of the cost/benefit factors involved in implementing accessibility into Web presences.

Many of the factors that must be considered are listed with examples of how they might be considered from a direct expense view, an investment view, or as assets/liabilities.

Once a strategic decision is made to scope the level of effort, the deployment will need to be translated into operational requirements with costs applied. The costs will include training, design, quality assurance or test processes. The impact on current projects will also need to be assessed.

Considerations for cost and benefit:

• Implementation costs:
  • Accessibility Assessment
    Accessibility evaluation of existing web sites, mainly done by external consultants. [See sample assessment].
    
  • Training
    Consider management briefing, general awareness, in-depth technical training, other. [See training suggestions].
  • Subject matter expert time
    External consultants time to support accessibility implementation.
  • Materials, equipment, tools and assistive technologies
    Need to purchase new Web authoring software [see guidelines at: ...], and any assistive technologies for purpose of Web site evaluation and testing [see information on assistive technologies at:... ]
  • Developer time
    Time needed for development of a new accessible design and retrofitting of existing site.
    
  • Quality assurance and testing
    Internal ressources needed for accessibility testing all through the developmentt.
  • Travel
    Travel costs for external consultants or external training of internal staff.
  • Contingency
    Provision for other costs or unexpected overspending.
• Impacts or effects on development (could be + or -):
  • Accessibility Architecture (Modeling? Framework? Guidelines?)
    
  • Site Updates
    
  • Process for managing inaccessible legacy content
  • Development of content checking process or tools
  • Reduced life cycle development, operational, and maintenance costs
  • Increase portability to new devices and technologies
  • Potentials for economies of scale
  • Trained corps of developers
• Impacts or effects on site functioning (could be + or -):
  • Number of pages: dynamic vs. static
  • Changed Transfer rate costs
  • Changed Speed of Transaction
  • Variations in user agent support
• Impacts or effects on organisational place and image:
  • Market share
    Accessible Web site represents often new market opportunities or product branding enhancements.
  • Organisational Image improvements
    An accessible site will enlarge audience and improve organisational image.
  • Increased usability
    Accessible desing will increase usability for all users.
  • Content that is better indexed and easier to search/mine/find
    Using of alt text and other acessibility features can improve search engine rank.
  • New method of providing services will lower cost of providing services
    Savings in hardcopy/multimode document delivery will reduce costs of alternative format production and distribution