Thread Subject: Re: Comment regarding making the business case

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From: Jim Tobias
Date: Mon, Feb 05 2007 7:04 AM

Yes, I agree, Tom. There's a lot of loose talk about "the" business case,
as
if there is only one. I guess at the "Executive level" there's something
like
a "why should we care?" argument that can use aggregated numbers in an
attempt
to convince the audience that there are more potential users than one might
think, holding more dollars than one might think.

But that's not really as business case. It's more the way Tom describes it:
if we make a certain change, how will the market respond? Qualitatively,
what is the market segment that will become more activated as a result of
that change? Quantitatively, what's a reasonable estimate for the revenue
enhancement?

There are several inherent problems in this, not the least of which is that
we don't have much of history to point to. There are not enough cases (in
public, anyway) that show an accessibility effect (or even a usability
effect!) on product revenue. Any volunteers?

There's also a problem on the cost side. For software, the cost of adding
an accessibility feature is technically zero, because the expenditure was
in teaching the developer what accessibility is and how he/she might achieve
it. How do you amortize that cost across all the software products that
developer will subsequently affect?


***
Jim Tobias
Inclusive Technologies
+1.732.441.0831 v/tty
+1.908.907.2387 mobile
skype jimtobias

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Albin [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Friday, February 02, 2007 11:52 AM
To: TEITAC desktop/portable (hardware) subcommittee
Subject: [teitac-hardware] Comment regarding making the business case

Hi All,
I think that it is important that we continue to advance the business case
for accessible products. However, I think that we will be much more
effective with the argument(s) if we are well prepared. For example, while
listeners may be sympathetic to a statement that there are X users, they may
not find that to be a sufficiently developed argument to make the case.
Alternatively, we may need to be prepared to make substantiated arguments,
perhaps along the lines of " adding this feature will increase the market by
Y percent at a unit cost of Z dollars and can be achieved within A months."
Best regards,
Tom Albin

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