Fw: Building a business case for web accessibility

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phill Jenkins" <pjenkins@us.ibm.com>
To: <sec508@trace.wisc.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2001 3:33 PM
Subject: RE: Building a business case for web accessibility


> The W3C WAI Education & Outreach working group has a draft Business Case
> [1] which also includes an appendix of cost considerations [2].  Good
> references but no real numbers.
>
> All the data I've seen is not very detailed so one doesn't know if it
> includes training costs, or if the designer already knows about
> accessibility, or if there was an existing accessible template, how was
> testing done, etc.  And the same problem exists with the original costs of
> development, so percentages are not very helpful and often misleading.
> Although when forced to give someone a number, it is usually in the 10-25%
> range, but I've gotten higher than 100% when it was an old inaccessible
> Java applet and lower than 10% when it was only missing alt text..  One
> thing for sure, it takes extra effort, expense, or time to do anything,
> whether it is accessible or not.
>
> As a friend explained to me in high school, "It depends, and that's
final."
>
> Regards,
> Phill Jenkins
> IBM Research Division - Accessibility Center
>
> [1] http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/bcase/
> [2] http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/bcase/ap-impcos.html
>
>

Received on Friday, 10 August 2001 20:51:34 UTC