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Jim Interviews the GAWDS
Is accessible web design a cost or a benefit for clients?
Gez Lemon (Juicy Studio)
A benefit. Web development is a profession, and as such, web developers should be expected to know their craft. If a site is developed with accessibility in mind, it doesn't take any longer to build the site. It's usually quicker, as the markup tends to be less bloated, and the separation of presentation from content makes it a lot quicker to produce pages, and also a lot easier to maintain a site. The rewards of better search engine positioning and increased share of the market are a benefit, along with fulfilling a moral and in some cases a legal obligation to their customers.
Julian Rickards
Ultimately it is a benefit which can reduce costs to the extent that the expense of redesign can be offset by the savings. In addition, by not excluding those customers or visitors who would be excluded by an inaccessible design, additional revenue may be generated, either by page ads or sales of products and services.
Amanda Owen (Leeds Design)
It's a benefit, though this may only become evident over time.
Victoria Clare (Clare Associates Ltd)
It's a benefit. Inaccessible web design goes hand in hand with excluding audiences who may have money to spend and excluding search engine indexing, which has a direct impact on the bottom line. Lack of accessibility can often result in discomfort even for audiences who are technically able to use the website (for example, people who find larger fonts easier to read). And then there's the legal argument.
Derek Featherstone (Further Ahead Inc.)
While there are some costs currently associated with accessibility, in the long run accessible web design is a benefit. As more people become aware of web accessibility issues and are follow "best practices", building an accessible web site should not cost any more than a "non-accessible" web site.
Rob Sayles (Designory UK Ltd)
This shouldn't be seen as a cost, as web design and development agencies should be factoring accessibility into their projects from their inception. The benefit to clients is evident through increased access and response to online information by their customers
Billy Mabray (Smart Goat Web Design)
It can be both. If your site is not designed with accessibility in mind from the beginning, you are going to pay some money to bring it up-to-date. However, clients will find that the benefits outweigh the costs. Accessible web sites are more usable by everyone, not just the disabled, and tend to cost less in bandwidth and maintenance.
James ONeill (Sauk County Government, Wisconsin - US)
When a site is designed from the ground up it is an integral part of the design process - not a real cost associated. It is a benefit to the client because it shows social awareness, sensitivity, and responsibility.
Bruce Lawson (brucelawson.co.uk)
It's a benefit, and as such costs. But like health and safety etc, the cost of doing it is much less than the potential costs of not doing it.
Ryan Christie
I think it can be both a cost and a benefit for clients. Clients with pre-established sites will of course need to expend some funds to bring them up to date with accessibility. Acessibility benefits everyone though, not just large corporations (on the client side) or the disabled (on the user side). Proper use of accessible features make sites more accessible for everyone.
Liam McGee (Communis Ltd)
Small cost, big benefit. Clients need to see accessibility in terms of market reach, *not* legal liability. A carrot in the hand is worth two sticks in the bush. Ahem.
Paul Bellows (Yellow Pencil, Inc)
It is a benefit and a cost, but in the same way that a wheelchair ramp to a restaurant may not lead to an enormous boost in business, but the lack of one could be a significant liability. I don't think insurance is a benefit to most companies, however the lack of it can be a liability. At the same time, the principles behind accessible web design lead to benefits that far exceed insurance. Accessible web design goes beyond site visitors with visual or physical impairments. Accessible web design should recognize that visitors have, and will continue to, access your site in methods that you may or may not have anticipated. Whether it's wireless web, text readers, cell phones or search engines, the principles behind accessible design lead to website content that is available to a wider audience, and this is a benefit. In addition, the principles of accessible design, when combined with web standards like XHTML and CSS for layout, lead to a website that is leaner, faster and much less expensive to modify and maintain. These are all benefits and I've been extremely successful in selling clients on these benefits. When I do an accessibility/standards makeover on a client site, they're always amazed at how their Google ranking jumps. I always love explaining to them that Google is the web's biggest information consumer, and it loves accessible sites.
Jaz-Michael King
Making content accessible is often cheaper, especially over time. Anyone who has revisited a Web site three years later to upgrade, redesign or freshen up the site, knows that content stored within inaccessible Web sites means doing the same amount of work the second time around. Content accessibility, when successfully appplied, can cut future iterations (or even repurposings) to about 10-15% of the required development/design/production time.
Olly Hodgson (none)
Its a minimal cost at design time, which results in the big benefit of a more user friendly and accessible finished product - which opens up your site to a whole new market.
Mike Pepper (Enigma SEO Consulting)
It is a benefit. From a commercial perspective, the greater the audience, the better the opportunity to sell an idea or product, as well as the kudos and goodwill associated with such practice where the rising tide of legislation brings more media attention and focus groups to bear on accessibility issues.
Karl Groves
Accessible web design should not result in any increased cost for the client, and would therefore be purely beneficial to them. Accessible design is, in its very nature, a quality-of-work issue. This is due to the fact that most of what is considered "accessible design" is nothing more than the authoring of proper document markup. The (x)HTML spec calls for its elements to be used for specific purposes and equal access was one of the primary concerns. For example, a document is invalid if <img> elements do not contain "alt" attributes. If designer/ developer is creating invalid markup, its quality is suspect in my eyes. For this same reason, inaccessible design is indicative of low-quality work. But "quality work" should not be regarded as something above and beyond what is expected. I would make a case for saying that those who turn out inaccessible sites are simply not doing their job. The exception comes into things like captioning and transcriptioning multimedia objects on a site. This does indeed come as a cost to the client, only insofar as doing the captioning/ transcriptioning results in additional man hours to create. But this should not be regarded as anything more than a development cost, as part of the site programming/ production itself - not as a detrimental "extra" when creating an accessible site. For the above reasons, accessible web design is almost purely beneficial. The same techniques used to create an accessble site are also recognized as methods to increase overall usability of the site. In other words, everyone benefits in some way. Many methods used to "enhance" accessibility are shown to have a positive effect upon search engine rankings. Afterall, searchbots are nothing more than automated text-only browsers. Last, disabled persons are loyal customers. Some CRM experts estimate that it costs roughly 4x as much to get a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. By making an accessible site, you're putting yourself in position to attract new customers through a tightly knit word-of-mouth community known for loyalty to companies who recognize their unique needs. To put it bluntly, accessible design means free advertising from happy customers and lower CRM costs. Accessible design makes sense on all counts. Its not the "added cost" that some say, but is exactly the opposite.
James Craig
Up-front cost. Long-term benefit. Long-term savings so the benefits outweigh the initial cost.
Martin Espericueta (FierceStreet Networks)
Accessible designs are definately a great benefit for clients! Old world style designs are the real cost for clients. Tag-soup markup, and by that I mean using nested table after nested table, browser-proprietary tags, etc., has driven the cost associated with web design too high. Leaner/meaner coding practices are the cost-effective future to web design.
Jon Gibbins (Analog)
You get what you pay for. Adopting inclusive Web technologies has many benefits, which briefly include increased reach, notable improvements in usability, and highly efficient sites with reduced maintenance costs. If you are going to do something you want to be proud of, it's worth doing it right, preferably first time. The same goes for Web sites. If you want a site to be proud of, it's worth getting it done right.
Mel Pedley (Black Widow Web Design)
Having an accessible web site is a significant benefit for clients. Despite the relatively high uptake of faster 'net access, the user market shows no tendancy to prefer over-burdened, over-bloated, sites once the initial, fast-access, novelty has worn off. At the end of the day, users want only one thing - information. They want it quickly (preferably yesterday) and then they want to go somewhere else. Sites that are fast loading with intuitive navigation and a number of ways of moving around seem to be preferable to those which bemuse and bewilder people into playing "Guess where the page I want is?" games. All of the above are part of the 'extra benefits' that come with accessible design...and that's before you even consider that the 10-15% of the population that do have a registered disability, are increasingly in control of their own financial upkeep. What kind of businesses ignore a 10% slice of the market? Accessible design only becomes a significant cost if it is considered *after* a design is completed. Reverse engineering never was cheap.
Jake Carlson (Dragon Eye Design)
Accessibility will always have long term benefits, even if there are immediate costs involved. We as developers need to make sure our clients understand that accessibility is not a luxury, but a necessity. Accessible design is usable design, and is of benefit for everyone, not just the disabled.
