Was Re: accessible procurement policies

Here goes. And to those of you stipulating character line length... tough,
I'm on a roll and naming names so sue and be dammed
I quote
"It is sad for me to know  that they have to
"force" people to understand importance of accessibility and follow this
kind of regulations. "

You may be sad Keiko, I weep buckets.

You have to understand there is no political will to enforce the law. Just a
political will to be seen to endorse the law. A horse of a very different
colour. We hear sound bytes, we see no action. There is no desire
commercially to adapt the internet to accessible content. The internet is
market funded and thus market driven and only market forces will determine
content. There are loopholes and getout clauses everywhere.....undue
burden!? on whom???

This group whilst it's intentions are honorable lacks any credibility in the
corporate boardroom as it has no teeth.

In the UK in particular, we live in a fourth world waiting in a queue (we
are good at that, us Brits) to be upgraded to third world status. Millions
euros, and pounds sterling are wasted every year in projects funded by the
European social fund to address this very problem, it amounts to jobs for
the boys. Dial UK spent £350,000+ social fund money to update a database and
build an accessible website, now on attempt 3 the first 2 having failed to
deliver. The whole thing could have been done for under £50,000 I know, I
read the contract specifications and I was a bidder in the contract, then
failed in my bid as I was too cheap. Too cheap!!!??? I would have cleared
£20,000 on the contract. It also transpired that the consultant who wrote
the specifications was also advising the Board then later assisted with the
contract...OUCH! They failed to understand/misadvised the database (the
largest single cost in the successful bid) did not have to be re wrtten and
put into windows format, it would sit quite happily on a server in it's
existing state/format and be accessed by every office countrywide over the
internet. Time taken to do this? A morning at best. But then this was also
the organisation that spent £1 million for a report by an international
audit house. The resulting infomation nearly all of which could have been
found at the local library, which is where the audit house got the info...I
spoke to one of the researchers. Aghh......

Show me a single accessible website that is owned and run by a large (over
2000 employees) commercial company, that does not require at best the viewer
to alter/adapt their text reader software?

The law my friends is an Ass. Justice is only for those in the corporate
world that can afford it. Everthing else is window dressing.

I'm off to drown worms.

Paul Davis

Received on Tuesday, 9 March 2004 08:09:32 UTC