when is some too much? WAS RE: [thelist] Link Types

[john at johnallsopp.co.uk]

So there I was, just laying in bed thinking, and thought this (probably a
good PhD project (or lifetime's work)).

There's the five nines idea for things like server or network reliability
isn't there .. where you try to get 99.999% uptime.

And there's six sigma in quality control, where (correct me if I'm wrong),
you try to reach a very low level of rejects.

Isn't there a similar figure for websites .. this website is accessible by
99.999% of the people on Earth? If there is, I don't know of one.

If there were, how 'accessible' would the average website be. It would have
to be available in English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic at least.
It would have to be available by phone (Voice XML) as well as by the usual
methods. That's before you reach issues of blindness, deafness, dyslexia,
children, illiteracy and so on. I bet the standard western website is
accessible to only about 10-20% of the planet's people. Hardly the
universally accessible resource it's intended to be. But anyway, at least
with a metric like that, a single number, you could set targets and build
accessibility competition.

(Actually, let me just challenge myself here. Putting the website in Russian
may not come 'before' reaching illiterate people .. depends which group is
the larger).

Who would want a 99.999% accessible website? The UN? Aids awareness is
something everyone needs.

Wouldn't 99.999% accessibility be an interesting goal? I know it's pie in
the sky, but to reach 99.999% accessibility you'd have to solve all kinds of
other problems .. lack of electricity, poverty, political freedom.

You could get a profile of the worlds people by combining Census
information. And then filter that for specific websites. Clearly most
companies don't want to reach the whole world. Your standard pizza outlet
has little interest in feeding the starving millions afaik.

Well, I got excited anyway :-)

Cheers
J