RE: How to convince businesses to be accessible...

DJW:
>	PDAs do reflect big spenders, so would be a priority
>	for a place in the top 80%.  On the other hand, they
>	are so different from desktops that someone targetting
>	them would probably produce an alternative page, which
>	would increase the cost of supporting them and reduce
>	their priority.  They are also much in a minority.
>
>	People with 14.4K modems will be put in a similar class
>	to those with text only browsers.  They are a small minority,
>	and there is circumstancial evidence that they are not
>	spending on technology goods.  I think they would be
>	classed as people to ignore when designing the site.

I would tend to disagree.  The pda in this case probably is meant to refer
to the wider phenomenon of access via mobile (WAP) devices.  As is
documented by the W3C in the Mobile Access document.
(http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-html40-mobile/)

The primary idea communicated there is that the problems addressed by the
accessibility guidelines have a direct application to content translation
for wireless devices.  While I concur that there will be specific WAP
targeted sites (ie. sites designed in native WAP) I have to believe that the
vast majority of content delivered to mobile devices will be formatted into
WML by a wireless ASP/portal.  As such a business that wants it's content to
be accessible to wireless devices in the future has a compelling reason to
buy into accessibility now.

The experience via 14.4 modems is, in my mind, a subset of the mobile usage
cases (which currently access content at an average of 9.6 kbps!).  Current
wireless devices used for information access (predominately WAP) have large
bandwidth constraints.  To this end the experience of a 14.4 modem user does
strongly reflect that of a mobile user.

My 2 cents.

Tim Springer

----Data---
http://www.thestandard.com/research/metrics/display/0,2799,15258,00.html
People with WAP phones (2005): 484 Million
People with real phones (2005): 1.3 Billion

Received on Thursday, 5 October 2000 14:51:59 UTC