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RE: cost to retrofit existing site?

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From: Mark D. Urban
Date: Jan 3, 2006 3:40PM

Glenda,

I'd figure the following basic costs:

* Training time per experienced developer: 40 hours (24 in self-led
or instructor-led web accessibility, 16 in review of literature and
techniques of your chosen tool)

* Advanced techniques (for your lead developer or "accessibility
guru"): 24 hours

* Cost of courses - this can vary wildly, depending on how informed
you wish your developers to be. There are free courses out there, but
obviously the pay courses will be much more focused and have better support.

* Literature and reference costs: you should have at least two
reference books - in shameless self-promotion I recommend the one
co-authored by myself and such notables as Jim Thatcher, Mike Burks, Cynthia
Waddell, and others called "Constructing Accessible Websites". Many other
good ones are out there - average price is around 35 dollars (US)

* Plan logistics: 40 hours. This is the cost of your time to run
around and make sure everybody is on board with the plan, and has scheduled
themselves for training.

* QA [Checking each new page to ensure its accessibility before
posting]:

* Tool cost: this varies - for the site size, in this case you will
need one of the site-level tools, not just a freebie page checker like
http://www.cynthiasays.com/Default.asp .
* Review and remediation of new pages: .5 hours per every 3 pages,
assuming that your developers have been trained.

* And - the big one - remediation of existing pages. Figure 2 hours
for every 5 pages. While many will not take that long, you need to factor in
design issues (redoing or rethinking color schemes and fonts) and you need
to figure that complex tables or forms may take longer. ALSO- you may have
to completely redo some of the PDF files - fixing improperly made PDFs is
almost never worth the effort.

Again, these are my thoughts on costs, if you want to do it right. Hourly
rates will vary based on your pay rates, and the tool/course costs will vary
based on your choices.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

-Mark D. Urban

919-395-8513 (cell)
Chair, North Carolina Governor's Advocacy Council for Persons with
Disabilities
Keep up with the latest in worldwide accessibility at (
<http://www.icdri.org/>; http://www.icdri.org/)