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Re: Academic Library Bucks Web Accessibility

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From: Michael D. Roush
Date: Nov 6, 2003 1:24PM

----- Original Message -----
From: "ilana kingsley" < <EMAIL REMOVED> >


> Greetings,
> I've recently started a new job as a Web librarian in
> a small-mid-size university. I've been trying to
> implement web-accessibility policies for the library,
> however, a few department heads feel that this is too
> costly. All I want to do is make sure that any content
> the library produces meets W3C Priority 1 guidelines.

First of all, "Excelsior and Huzzah!" to you for your stance! I hope that
this list and other resources will be able to assist you in your worthy
effort.

As far as the 'expense' objection, I won't sugar-coat this.... captioning
can be expensive. Even using a wonderful tool like MAGPie, it can be very
time-consuming. But, producing quality digital video and audio is expensive
too. And if they are doing more than just slapping a quick recording of a
lecture or something online, they are already going to considerable expense.
If not, the video and audio they are producing probably isn't worth the
ones-and-zeros that it uses!

Also, I would be very surprised if somewhere, even in a small-to-mid-size
university, there isn't a student assistant or four who can do captioning
and/or transcription work that would not cost the university a fortune, and
probably could be managed under work-study assignments.

My first thought was "Don't these professors want this content to be
available to deaf students?" But, that's probably a silly question. Of
course they do. My guess is that their fear is that they will *lose* their
video/audio archives (which they are likely very proud of) if someone
squawks too loudly about their inaccessibility. I think it should be very
clear that a deaf student who cannot take advantage of such a benefit simply
because she is deaf constitutes 'discrimination' under the ADA, and should
concern the university.

However, I would also agree that spending a fortune for captioning is an
unreasonable burden. Give them concrete numbers. "Transcribing one hour of
video should take x hours using y equipment for a total cost of z dollars
added to a project that already costs us blah-blah-blah".

Making a site accessible from the beginning is a whole lot less expensive
than going back and 'retro-fitting' it to make it accessible later. Just
ask the people who managed the website for the Sydney Olympics.

The fear of the expense should be met with honest numbers on the current
cost, and cost of doing it right. The 'moral' argument of it being the
right thing to do is probably a losing argument with them. They know it's
the right thing to do, but something else is holding them back. Probably
that fear I mentioned before. So, if you can cut through that one, both
sides will have what they want.

I'm sure members of this list will be happy to help in any way possible,
especially any who might happen to be in your region.

Michael Roush
AccessRamp.org


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