Re: Ethics and money Re: UK Businesses Reject Accessible Web Sites

On Fri, 24 Dec 2004, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:

> <quote who="Andy Heath">
> > It seems to me that peace is always cheaper than war!
> > Unless of course you are a general or an arms
> > maker.
> ...
> Yes. This is an important point - some people are.
> > What happened to ethical reasons for doing stuff ?
> > What happened to being decent to people and
> > not trying to screw them ?
> ...
> > Having a world where everyone can join in is
> > something worth having.  Arguing about cost
> > is deception ;-).
>
> Actually my interest in Accessibility has quite a lot ot do with the fact
> that it is frustrating to me to have a communications technology that
> doesn't communicate.
>
> A fully costed analysis of accessibility (cost to implement, savings made,
> new revenue generated) is an extremely rare beast, and I have never seen
> one that is public. The closest we get are some statements about some
> costs or benefits of some project or other.

in my real life I am a transportation engineer. some years ago I did a
cost/benefit analysis of mainline accessible transit vs paratransit
service.  I proved in court that the mainline transit was very cost
effective.   the only error I made in the long run was many of my
projections were too conservative.  New York City saves over $30,000.00 a
day by using lift buses vs paratransit vans, these are real numbers and
they are valid, and so is the 12million a year that they have they
wouldn't have.

> So long as this is the case, those who argue (based on no real strong
> evidence) that accessibility costs a great deal can keep doing so in the
> face of general statements that it doesn't cost much, which are not
> themselves supported by the sort of evidence that scientists (even social
> scientists) would be keen to accept - let alone the kind of evidence that
> accountants tend to demand.

so someone who really knows the issue should put it together. I only use
the web accessiblity don't know too much about the costing of it.

Bob


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Received on Saturday, 25 December 2004 02:07:16 UTC