- From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-edapta@idyllmtn.com>
- Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 12:05:50 -0800
- To: <mburks952@worldnet.att.net>, <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
At 1:56 PM -0500 12/16/01, Michael R. Burks wrote: >This sounds like - "We don't need any ramps or accessible rest >rooms, no people in wheel chairs come here!" or "We don't need any >TTY's no deaf people ever call us!" No, it sounds like legitimate market research, which is what people on this list are inexplicably championing as a "good thing" for accessibility. It's _not_. Relying on a business case is bad because except for very isolated cases, it's almost never a good idea to support a disabled group of consumers, from a purely financial standpoint. Without, say, government subsidies, it's way too expensive to spend the money to make your services (building, web site, whatever) accessible in return for the amount of investment you get back. Which is why we need to look at the arguments of justice and ethics and morality as being more compelling -- if "we" (the W3C WAI) are going to look at them at all. (Frankly, I think we need a separate organization for activism, as I believe the W3C is ill-suited for the advocacy role in addition to the technical role.) --Kynn -- Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com> http://kynn.com Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com Web Accessibility Expert-for-hire http://kynn.com/resume January Web Accessibility eCourse http://kynn.com/+d201
Received on Sunday, 16 December 2001 15:14:05 UTC