Re: WAI business case addresses costs, as well as benefits?

Dan,

Actually the document you landed on is supposed to be titled "Auxiliary 
Benefits of Accessible Web Design" -- the correction was made in some 
places but not in all, I will follow up on that -- and it is supposed to be 
only one page of a resource suite that is still in draft stage and that 
more broadly addresses the various aspects of a business case. We do in 
fact also have a draft of cost considerations relating to implementation of 
Web accessibility, at
         http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/Drafts/bcase/ap-impcos.html
In addition we are working on marketplace analysis, etc. -- it is a 
combination of the auxiliary benefits, cost factors, marketplace analysis, 
etc., that bring most organizations to the conclusion that accessible 
design is good for business. But you will note that all of the sections of 
the Education & Outreach Working Group's business case resource suite are 
in various stages of overlapping development, as we've been focusing on 
other deliverables recently.

We (EOWG) are actually getting back to working on this piece this month, 
and I expect the materials will become clearer shortly.

- Judy

At 10:42 AM 8/21/2002 -0500, Dan Connolly wrote:

>A www-tag participant questioned a claim
>by Tim Bray that not doing WAI is bad
>for business; I was going to chide him
>for asking the TAG to do his homework,
>noting that a google search for "WAI business"
>quickly yields
>
>   Business Benefits of Accessible Web Design
>   http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/benefits.html
>
>but while that document gives ample evidence
>of benefits of accessible web design, it
>doesn't actually conclude that the benefits
>outweigh the costs; in fact, I can't see
>any discussion of the costs such as those
>cited in the www-tag discussion:
>
> > For example, which studies have examined the costs of staff time
>getting up
> > to speed with accessibility issues, time and costs of setting up SOPs
>etc to
> > ensure that a chosen level of compliance is implemented and shown that
>those
> > costs are less than the increased sales produced by addressing
>accessibility?
> >
>   -- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2002Aug/0301.html
>
>--
>Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

-- 
Judy Brewer    +1.617.258.9741    http://www.w3.org/WAI
Director, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
MIT/LCS Room NE43-355, 200 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA,  02139,  USA

Received on Thursday, 22 August 2002 09:30:09 UTC