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SearchDeveloping a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization: Overview
Page Contents
Introduction
The Web is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation, and more. The Web is used for receiving information as well as providing information and interacting with society. Therefore it is essential that the Web be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. An accessible Web also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.
There are initial costs for organizations implementing Web accessibility; however, the initial costs are often offset by a full return on investment. In order to be willing to invest the initial costs, many organizations need to understand the social, technical, and financial benefits of Web accessibility and the expectations of the returns throughout the organization. The justification to commit resources to a project is often called a "business case". Business cases usually document an analysis of the project's value in meeting the organization's objectives, the cost-benefit analysis, and the expected outcomes.
This page is the first in a series of five pages covering the business case for Web accessibility. The five pages, called a "resource suite", are designed to help develop a customized business case for Web accessibility for a specific organization. The resource suite presents many different aspects of Web accessibility and includes guidance on incorporating these aspects into a specific organization's business case.
The information in this resource suite may be used or adapted for different organizations, according to the copyright and document use policies of W3C. This document should be referenced as:
Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization, S.L. Henry, ed. World Wide Web Consortium (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), August 2005. http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/
Factors in a Business Case for Web Accessibility
This resource suite presents the aspects of the business case for Web accessibility in the following pages:
- Social Factors addresses the role of Web accessibility in equal opportunity for people with disabilities; the overlap with digital divide issues; and benefits to people without disabilities, including older people, people with low literacy and people not fluent in the language, people with low bandwidth connections to the Internet and older technologies, and new and infrequent Web users.
- Technical Factors addresses interoperability, quality, reducing site development and maintenance time, reducing server load, enabling content on different configurations, and being prepared for advanced Web technologies.
- Financial Factors addresses financial benefits from increased Web site use and direct cost savings, and cost considerations including initial costs and on-going costs.
- Legal and Policy Factors addresses requirements for Web accessibility from governments and other organizations in the form of laws, policies, regulations, standards, guidelines, directives, communications, orders, or other types of documents.
Developing a Customized Business Case
An effective business case focuses on the organization's objectives and motivations. Certain aspects of the value and outcomes of Web accessibility are more important to one organization than another, based on its particular situation. For example, one organization's motivation might be to demonstrate social responsibility by being inclusive of people with disabilities, while another organization's primary motivation might be technical quality and meeting international standards.
Just as organizations' objectives and motivations are different, their business cases for Web accessibility are somewhat different. A customized business case for a specific organization will have different content and style, and incorporate different aspects with different emphasis, focused on that particular organization.
To help guide development of a customized business case, the Social Factors, Technical Factors, Financial Factors, and Legal and Policy Factors pages each start with questions to help identify how the factors apply to a specific organization.
Examples of How Factors Differ Across Environments
Examples of different approaches to customizing a business case are provided below.
- A corporation might emphasize:
- financial gains and cost savings from increased Web use due to increased potential market share, search engine findability, and increased usability
- reducing risk of legal action resulting in high legal expenses and negative image
- the public relations benefits of demonstrating social responsibility
- A government ministry or agency might emphasize:
- requirements based on laws and policies such as anti-discrimination legislation or information and communications technology policy that ensures that public services are available to all
- long-term savings from improved server performance and decreased site maintenance efforts
- An educational institution might emphasize:
- the number of students, faculty, or staff with disabilities in educational settings as a social responsibility consideration
- the benefits of Web accessibility to students with different learning styles, older computer equipment, or low bandwidth Internet connections
- legal or policy requirements
- A non-governmental organization might emphasize:
- social responsibility factors, such as the organization's commitment to human rights, including the right to information
- the organization's interest in ensuring that its materials are available to all of its potential audiences
- A Web design business might emphasize:
- the competitive advantage and financial benefits of being able to meet increasing requests for accessible Web design
- the technical benefits and long term financial benefits to clients of providing sites according to Web standards
- the public relations benefits of being able to support clients' interests in demonstrating social responsibility
While a specific business case for Web accessibility might emphasize a few aspects, it often is important to include other aspects as well. For example:
- an organization with a clear legal requirement for Web accessibility might still need a solid cost/benefit analysis to get management to commit sufficient resources for an effective Web accessibility program
- some commercial organizations might be more responsive to a social responsibility argument than to a standard cost/benefit analysis when committing to Web accessibility
Related Resources
Business cases are sometimes accompanied by an implementation plan describing the steps involved in making an organization's Web site accessible. A separate WAI resource suite, Implementation Plan for Web Accessibility, provides information on initial assessment, developing organizational policies, training, selecting authoring tools, and conformance evaluation.
Web Content Accessibility and Mobile Web: Making a Web Site Accessible Both for People with Disabilities and for Mobile Devices introduces how Web sites can more efficiently be designed to be accessible from a mobile device and also accessible for people with disabilities when developers understand the significant overlap between the two design goals and guidelines.