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Re: Accessible Cold Fusion up-charge

for

From: John Foliot - Stanford Online Accessibility Program
Date: Jun 20, 2008 11:30AM

Farris (Buddy) Allison wrote:
>> The output is
>> expected to be moderately complex scientific data, presented in
>> tables.
>>
>> My question is: does the revision from 640 hours to 970 hours seem
>> reasonable?

NO! This smells *very* fishy.

Gareth Dart wrote:
> I would, at the very least, ask the contractor for
> a breakdown of these extra hours and why they think they're
> necessary.

I totally agree here: an additional 330 hours is huge, given that (based
upon the limited information you have provided) the only *real* issue[s] you
might encounter with your proposed authoring environment/application are:

* 5.1 For data tables, identify row and column headers.
(appropriate use of <th> vs. <td>... This is basic HTML 101)

* 5.2 For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column
headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.
(this involves the use of scope and/or the headers/id combination. This
might be slightly more complex to envision/design, but it isn't rocket
surgery either... See: http://tinyurl.com/33ucw [W3C site])

IMHO, any agency or firm that cannot create, out of the box (never mind
mandated), web content today that meets basic HTML compliance and delivers
WCAG 1 Priority 1 compliance is probably an agency/firm that should be
passed over... In today's standards-based marketplace if they need to charge
you more to do things right the first time then they probably aren't a good
fit for you moving forward. (FWIW, Priority 1 maps almost directly to
Section 508 [http://jimthatcher.com/sidebyside.htm] and so any company that
wants to do business with a government organization should already be
producing accessible content as a matter of course...)

JF
====================================John Foliot
Program Manager
Stanford Online Accessibility Program
http://soap.stanford.edu
Stanford University
Tel: 650-862-4603

SOAP is a program directed by the
Vice Provost for Student Affairs

====================================