Re: posted without comment...

At 7/26/2007 11:50 PM, David Woolley wrote:

>Debi Orton wrote:
>>risk alienating 10% of your potential audience by ignoring 
>>accessibility.  Further, you're basically saying that you have no wish
>
>For most businesses that is very acceptable.  There is a dictum 
>called the 80:20 rule, which basically says that you can ignore the 
>20% least profitable end of your market because the additional cost 
>of selling to them doesn't justify the returns.  Only if you are in 
>a mature market, do they matter; otherwise you simply create a new 
>product, when the previous one has saturated the 80%.
>
>This is essentially why legislation is needed to make businesses be 
>accessible.


One of the things I find so aggravating is the prejudicial assumption 
by many businesses that people with significant disabilities are 
subsumed in that "least profitable 20%."  I'm sure in many cases they 
don't really think it through: if they feel they can safely ignore 
20% of their market, and if they figure that people requiring 
accessibility efforts number less than 20%, they decide they can 
ignore those folks without really questioning whether the disabled 
and the least profitable are in fact overlapping Boolean sets.

One of my recent experiences in this area was a conversation with a 
sports equipment retailer.  He waved away the importance of 
accommodating people with visual disabilities on his website while at 
the same time acknowledging that most of his internet revenue was 
earned before the December holidays -- a time when most of his 
customers buy gifts for other people.  Talking to him was like 
talking to a rock, only less fun.

Regards,

Paul
__________________________

Paul Novitski
Juniper Webcraft Ltd.
http://juniperwebcraft.com