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Re: Remediation Cost Versus Inclusive Design Cost

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From: Meacham, Steve - FSA, Kansas City, MO
Date: Sep 11, 2017 3:53PM

At the risk of sounding cynical, an argument can be made that literally doing nothing (pre or post implementation) may be cheaper than doing something (again, pre or post implementation). My experience is that organizations that are uninterested in doing the first tend to be just as uninterested in doing the second. Note I say "doing" rather than "talking about."

-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Tim Harshbarger
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2017 12:40 PM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED> ; WebAIM Discussion List < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Remediation Cost Versus Inclusive Design Cost

I think it is extremely tough to find stats specifically for accessibility or inclusive design.

You should be able to find stats on how much it costs to fix defects at various stages of a project (including post-implementation). I can't imagine there is a reason why addressing accessibility defects would have a significantly different cost than other defects like usability, functionality, or security. However, you might need to persuade your audience that accessibility defects aren't really any different than any other defect when it comes to repairing them. They all require that people have some level of knowledge about that type of defect in order to be able to identify and fix them. The more competent their knowledge level, the easier it will be to identify and fix the defect.

I think you should be able to prove that the cost of addressing defects in design and development are so much less than fixing them as part of remediation that there is no way you could ever run a remediation project for less than what it would have cost you to have addressed the defects during design and development.

Also, you might want to find examples where "remediation" can't fix the problem. That is the remediation needed to fix some problems can involve completely redesigning something from scratch.

Hopefully that helps somewhat.

Thanks,
Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: WebAIM-Forum [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Judith Blankman via WebAIM-Forum
Sent: Friday, September 08, 2017 10:54 AM
To: <EMAIL REMOVED>
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Remediation Cost Versus Inclusive Design Cost

Additionally, the argument might not be specific to inclusive design.

I think the point of persuasion is to do things right the first time, which is what inclusive design leads to.

From: "Blankman, Judith A." < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Date: Friday, September 8, 2017 at 8:52 AM
To: " <EMAIL REMOVED> " < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Remediation Cost Versus Inclusive Design Cost

I would be very interested in what you find, JP. We all know the pain, just need evidence to persuade others.

I have seen a graphic that illustrates the cost of defect fixing by stage that shows an increase 10 times exponentially.

I reached out to my colleague about where he found it and others like it. The graphic he sent to me is from a book 'Software Engineering- by Barry Boehm.

He suggests looking at the Software Engineering Institute. He also sent me this link: http://www.ieee.org/index.html and says that the IEEE standards drives the electronic/digital world.

Best,

Judith Blankman


From: WebAIM-Forum < <EMAIL REMOVED> > on behalf of JP Jamous < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Organization: Jepelsy
Reply-To: " <EMAIL REMOVED> " < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Date: Friday, September 8, 2017 at 8:07 AM
To: " <EMAIL REMOVED> " < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
Subject: [WebAIM] Remediation Cost Versus Inclusive Design Cost

Hi folks,

I have been researching this topic, but couldn't find anything useful. I'd like some information on how much it would cost to perform assessment and remediation on a project versus using inclusive design at the wireframe. My goal is to find evidence that implementing accessibility at the start of a project is cheaper than going through evaluation and remediation.


Any help or references will be highly appreciated.



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