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Re: Remediation Cost Versus Inclusive Design Cost

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From: Peter Shikli
Date: Sep 12, 2017 1:46PM

Getting back to the original question, which I find quite relevant because
of the justification I hear all the time, "Let's talk accessibility after
the redesign is complete." My response is always the question, "When has
your website not been in the middle of a redesign?"

As you can see from the respondents to this blog, the arguments for
including accessibility in a (re)design are qualitative, not quantitative,
which number-crunching decision makers find less compelling. They are
after all risk-averse folks unhappy with changing plans.

The reason for the absence of reports with the quantitative support that
Jim is looking for is because so many factors need to be considered on a
case-by-case basis, some with no quantitative impact in one case and the
same factor with a huge impact in another case.

To overcome this, I propose the development of a spreadsheet model that
trades off all the different factors with quantitative values decision
makers can put in themselves on a case-by-case basis. Such a model can
then be used to analyze what-if scenarios in the classical sense of a
cost-benefit analysis.

Rather than leave this as a suggestion for others, I would like to convert
this forum question into a call for a team of volunteers, myself included,
to develop such a model. We have a couple of talented Excel jockeys here.
What we would need to start out would be a list of quantifiable costs and
savings to integrate into the model. With that, I would present a
first-draft of the model on a collaborative site for team feedback.

To proceed, I would need two kinds of respondents to <EMAIL REMOVED> ,
one to say they would like to be on the development team, and another to
say they would use such a spreadsheet model if it were available at no
cost. I will gauge my interest in proceeding by that response.

Cheers,
Peter Shikli