Re: Costs of Accessibility?

I agree with Sandi, and the sentiment of your post under the section
'Websites Should Already be Accessible' Lainey. Ideally we should not
be talking about accessible websites, just websites.

Neither Sandi nor my fellow members of the EOWG, will be surprised to
hear me say this - accessibility is not an additional cost of building
a website, any professional web developer worthy of the job
description will be aware of the requirements and with varying degrees
of proficiency be able to create accessible sites.

By all means include 'accessibility' as a contractual requirement, but
if an agency tenders for a job and includes the cost of accessibility
as an extra line item I would strongly suggest that you choose another
provider. This core element of web development should come as
standard, you should not expect to pay extra for it anymore than you
would expect to pay extra for CSS.

If you are paying for usability testing then this should cover a wide
range of users as standard, including those with disabilities. Testing
will never cover all users, disabled or otherwise, but should cover
varying capabilities and requirements, from experienced and
inexperienced web users to those who use an assistive technology or
have specific needs beyond those of the average user.

Sadly we are not at the stage when we can make these assumptions, but
I think encouraging this mindset when it comes to procurement in large
organisations such as The U.S. Department of Justice is one way we can
force agencies to up their game and provide the services that they
should.

Ian.

On Sun, Nov 7, 2010 at 11:34 PM, Sandi Wassmer <sandi@copious.co.uk> wrote:
> Although I run a web design agency based in London, fluctuating exchange
> rate issues aside, these are the "loaded" questions that I am consistently
> asked and am loathe to answer broadly as these vary from project to project
> based on the complexity of the website's features, functionality, underlying
> technologies and the interplay between these and the conformance with the
> relevant areas of the WCAG.
> As a rule of thumb, the creation of a standards compliant, accessible
> website should be the expectation that any client should have when
> commissioning a website from a good web developer. The only costs to be
> borne in developing accessible sites should be that of the agency: as is the
> norm in any reputable organisation, the responsibility for ensuring that
> staff are appropriately trained to deliver services to clients is the
> agency's responsibility and, as such, clients should not incur any
> additional costs.
> However, in order to provide some sort of table of indices, may I suggest to
> set out a few different scenarios and provide associated cost ranges in
> order to demonstrate the sliding scale from a static HTML site to a
> transactional website that also captures personal sensitive data and a few
> other types in between?
> I would be more than happy to throw some ideas together into a spreadsheet
> if this would be useful.
> Kind Regards,
> Sandi
>
> Sent from my iPad
> Sandi Wassmer
> Copious Ltd / digital agency
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> On 5 Nov 2010, at 18:05, Lainey Feingold <LF@LFLegal.com> wrote:
>
> Dear WAI list:  In its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, The U.S.
> Department of Justice asks a question about cost:  "Question 13:  What are
> the annual costs generally associated with creating, maintaining, operating,
> and updating a website?"  Please share any information on this, as well as
> any information on the additional cost (if any) of including accessibility!
>  (off list to LF@LFLegal.com)
> I wrote about the costs of creating my accessible website
> at http://lflegal.com/2010/10/lflegal-doj-anprm/  More examples like that
> would be helpful to the Department.
> You can read all 19 questions in the full ANPRM at:
>  http://www.ada.gov/anprm2010/web%20anprm_2010.htm
> Thanks, Lainey
>
> Lainey Feingold
> Law Office of Lainey Feingold
> http://lflegal.com/
> 510.548.5062
> LF@LFLegal.com
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Received on Monday, 8 November 2010 00:04:28 UTC