Re: URGENT: Help

Costs are two fold, qualitative and quantitative.

1.  Quantitative - Cost to train the web developers. There will be a short
term cost increase realized, that is the bell curve will be i the front.
2.  Qualitative - Cost to deny PWD access to information.  PWD can  function
in society if they are provided the means that we certainly are capable of
providing.  Compare it to automobile safety requirements.
3.  Qualitative and Quantitative - Cost to have PWDs as an unproductive
members of society relying on government assistance, instead of being
productive members of society and contributing to taxes.

They will either see a net loss or net gain!

rob

----- Original Message -----
From: Francisco Godinho <f.godinho@mail.telepac.pt>
To: WAI Interest Group <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Cc: <guia.pasig@bigfoot.com>; Dolphin - Neill McBride
<support@dolphinaccess.com>; Hadar - Hans Sundstrõm
<hans.sundstrom@hadar.amu.se>; CAPS - Luis Azevedo <pclma@alfa.ist.utl.pt>;
IBM - SNS - Phill Jenkins <pjenkins@us.ibm.com>; IBM - SNS - Jim Thatcher
<thatch@us.ibm.com>; IBM - Robert B. Mahaffey <bmahaffe@us.ibm.com>; Javier
Romañach <jromanac@dial.eunet.es>; Alexis Donnelly
<Alexis.Donnelly@cs.tcd.ie>; Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y R.
<sinarmaya@mx3.redestb.es>; Francisco Antonio Soeltl
<fsoeltl@micropower.com.br>; Hadar - Jens Hansen <jens.hansen@hadar.amu.se>;
SIVA - Massimo Ferrario <massimo.ferrario@siva.it>; WAI - Judy Brewer
<jbrewer@w3.org>; Ricardo Silva <rsilva@pobox.com>; Microsoft - Gary M.
Moulton <garymo@microsoft.com>; Microsoft - David A. Bolnick
<davebo@microsoft.com>; NCAM - Larry Goldberg <Larry_Goldberg@wgbh.org>;
NCAM - Geoff Freed <Geoff_Freed@wgbh.org>; Robert Neff <
Sent: Friday, July 23, 1999 3:53 AM
Subject: URGENT: Help


> 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 07:58:31 UTC