- From: (unknown charset) Charles F. Munat <coder@acnet.net>
- Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1999 17:37:47 -0600
- To: (unknown charset) <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
#2 The second thing that I don't like about this list is another common piece of propaganda. This is the "accessibility is about more than just accessibility for people with disabilities" thread. Hold it! Hold it! Don't reach for that reply button yet, hear me out. I agree that accessibility in the larger picture includes making the web accessible to people by telephone, in their cars, at information kiosks, through brain-implants, whatever. I'm all for a variety of methods of access and I support CSS, XSL, and whatever methods might come along to make pages work for a variety of media. BUT... The issue of making sure a site is accessible to a person using the telephone is a business issue. The question is, Does it make sense for my company to spend X amount of dollars extra to make sure this site is accessible to the X percent of our visitors who might be using the phone to access the site. And the answer is pure math. If you are getting 0.05% of your hits from people using Lynx, it would be a very foolish decision to spend extra money (or to change the design of the site to one you might not like as much) just to make sure it is accessible to those visitors. Now I can already hear the screaming: "It doesn't take any extra money or effort!" or "You don't have to give up your current design!" See previous post (The first thing...). No businessperson who wants to remain in business can afford to ignore the simple logic of this type of decision. If I go to my client and say it's going to cost you 5% more to make your site accessible to 0.5% more people, he or she is going to question my sanity. And rightly so, from a business point of view. Play with the numbers if you like. Make it a 0.5% extra cost to make the site accessible to 5% more people. Fine. Now it makes sense, but the point is that it is a *business* decision. Making a site accessible to people with disabilities is also a business decision (and given the numbers involved, a wise one, in my opinion). But it is MUCH MORE THAN THAT. Making a site accessible to people who cannot access it any other way is an ethical decision. When you decide that you can't afford to support phone accessibility (setting aside the possibility that this might affect people with disabilities), you are deciding not to provide a *convenience* to your clientele. Not much different than deciding whether to have a site at all, or, for that matter, roughly equivalent to a burger joint deciding whether to add a drive-through window (accessible to people in their cars--how American). But a site that is inaccessible to people with disabilities is equivalent to segregating and ostracizing a portion of the population who cannot chose to no longer be persons with disabilities. Such a site is an *unethical* site in my opinion, and this list fails to capitalize on the moral power of that fact when it plays the "accessible for everyone" game. Again, I think making sites work in various mediums and on various browsers is an important part of consumer choice and good business sense. But I am offended by the implied equivalency between providing a convenience and acknowledging the *right* of everyone to equal access to that information. There are plenty of related issues here that I won't get into, such as the "artistic sites" thread (undecided on that one), the official sites vs. corporate or personal sites thread (I tend to think that personal sites might be exempt, but corporate sites should serve all the public), etc. OK, go for the reply button. I'm braced. One more to go. Charles Munat Puerto Vallarta
Received on Saturday, 2 January 1999 19:01:35 UTC