[thelist] Top 10 reasons to make your page accessible...

[Martin Burns]

On 11 Nov 2007, at 17:01, Christian Heilmann wrote:

> Why not collect the top 10 reasons why you shouldn't make your site
> accessible? That is less evangelizing and more "ah that is a problem,
> but here is a solution".
> http://www.digital-web.com/articles/ten_reasons_clients_dont_care_about_accessibility/
>
> Feeling as if we are in a time bubble...

Yes and no... current day job is a new venture for very large consumer  
company that has an enormous interest in branding, particularly aimed  
at youth markets. So as you'd imagine, being 'cool' is not unimportant.

New venture has a very significant web element to it (ie nearly all  
new customers are expected to come in over via the web channel, and  
the call centre app is pretty much an expanded version of the same  
site).

So, given the above, you'd expect that said site would have to be  
strong-armed into accessibility, right? Sorry, no cigar. The CEO of  
the client (you'd recognise the name...) is reported by those who talk  
to him as having a personal concern that the site be accessible.

Trouble is, as you've eluded in the digi-web article, it's seen as a  
technical matter, so cue lots of retro-fitting towards the end of the  
build phase. The HTML bits of the site were relatively easy (not least  
because they were built in a fairly accessibility-friendly way to  
start with). However... much of the operational bit of the site makes  
heavy use of Adobe Flex (which ain't anything like as bad as old- 
stylee Flash for accessibility), so the level of pain involved is not  
insignificant.

Cheers
Martin

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