Accessibility: Good or bad for business? (Was: Public list or not?)

In a message dated 20/08/2002 17:36:20 GMT Daylight Time, 
tbray@textuality.com writes:


> 3. Publishing *anything* for general human consumption and not dealing 
> with accessibility issues is stupid, immoral, and bad for business, as 
> has been made clear many times, not just by the W3C.

Tim,

I would like to ask a simple question in follow-up to the claim you made: Is 
addressing accessibility issues good or bad for business?

You claim it is "clear" that not addressing accessibility issues is "bad for 
business". Can you point me to the evidence that supports that conclusion 
please?

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?

The possibility occurs to me that you are referring to the ex cathedra, 
evidence-free form of "clear". But I don't want to judge you unfairly so 
offer you the opportunity to produce the evidence to support your claim of 
clear business benefits.

Andrew Watt