RE: Undue Burden and AOL

Leonard, 

	Your analysis is correct except for one small detail.  There are alot more
deaf/hard of hearing users on the internet than you propose in your
analysis.  

	What might be deemed as a compromise solution to the problem you bring up
is a phased approach to making one's site completely accessible.  For if
you could put the arguement for not making your multi-media files
accessible, why wouldn't the same arguement work for mot making the web
site accessible for the blind/visually impairred?  

	Just something to ponder when you want to talk about accessibility over
the web.  

Jeffrey Pledger 
President, Able Channel At 06:02 PM 11/19/99 -0500, Leonard R. Kasday wrote:
>Let me see if I understand Cynthia's comments on Kynn's opinion that
>
>>As a businessman, sure, I'd like to have my website reach everyone.
>>But if it costs me $10,000 to create the site, but would cost me
>>an extra $50,000 to make sure it's available to deaf users (because
>>I have multiple multimedia files that need synchronized captioning),
>>I'm not going to pay 500% more just so that a very small audience
>>(perhaps 1%) can access it.
>
>
>If we're talking about a small business with total profits of $30,000 a
>year, so that spending the extra 50,000 would bankrupt the company, then as
>I understand it it's undue burden.
>
>However, if we're talking about a company with profits in the Billions per
>year, and this is merely an annual expense, it's no longer an undue burden,
>right?
>
>Len
>-------
>Leonard R. Kasday, Ph.D.
>Institute on Disabilities/UAP, and
>Department of Electrical Engineering
>
>Temple University
>423 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA 19122
>kasday@acm.org   
>     
>(215) 204-2247 (voice)
>(800) 750-7428 (TTY)
>
>

Received on Friday, 26 November 1999 17:49:54 UTC