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Re: Impact on Effort Estimation

for

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Sep 28, 2005 8:00AM

> Hi,
>
> I know there are many experts there so I would like to ask on thing: Our
> company has recently decided to conform all web based interfaces to Web
> Accessibility Standards for Disable people so in this regard I would like to
> ask that how this will impact the effort estimation.

If your sole purpose is to adhere to "standards" (they are guidelines)
then you might as well not bother. You will put much more work into it
and the end result will please an online validator but is still not
accessible. Accessibility is not a technical issue or only for
disabled people. It is a nice by-product of good usability, proper
information architecture and standard conform web development.

> I mean if we want to conform to all the standards then how much more effort
> one has to put to conform to all the standards?. If previously one develops
> one page in a day then when he will go for all the standards then how long
> will it take?

That is impossible to say. If you consider accessibility when you
develop the page you are too late. How could you as a developer know
if a text is easy to grasp, if the colours are unambiguous or how hard
it is to use a site.

As one of the big parts of accessible web products is a proper and
easy to understand navigation through the product looking at single
pages is pointless.

Surely a text-only page takes less time than a search page with results?

--
Chris Heilmann
Blog: http://www.wait-till-i.com
Writing: http://icant.co.uk/
Binaries: http://www.onlinetools.org/