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WAI: Strategies, guidelines, resources to make the Web accessible to people with disabilities

Technical Factors in Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization
[DRAFT revision incorporating WCAG 2.0 and Older Users]

Editors Draft: 8 June 2009 [changelog; change-marked version]
Status: This document is a draft and should not be referenced or quoted under any circumstances. Please send comments to wai-eo-editors@w3.org (a publicly archived list). The current published version of this document is at www.w3.org/WAI/bcase/.

Page Contents

Introduction

This page is part of a resource suite that describes the social, technical, financial, and legal and policy factors relevant to developing a customized business case for Web accessibility for a specific organization.

Implementing Web accessibility solutions often results in improved technical performance. The relative importance of various technical benefits of Web accessibility is different for specific organizations and situations. For example, reducing server load might be most important to an organization with a large, mission-critical, high-traffic site; whereas another organization that focuses on cutting-edge technology might be more interested in interoperability and being prepared for advanced web technologies. However, these same technical benefits might not be very important for organizations with small, simple sites; they might be more interested in simplifying site maintenance.

This page provides guidance on addressing technical factors in a business case for Web accessibility.

Identifying Technical Factors for a Specific Organization

The following questionshelp identify how the technical aspects of Web accessibility apply to the organization:

See Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview for more information about the WCAG references below.

Reduce Site Development and Maintenance Time

Incorporating accessibility usually increases site development time initially, as discussed in Financial Factors. However, in the long term Web accessibility can reduce the time an organization spends on site development and maintenance, as follows:

Reduce Bandwidth Use and Server Load

Web accessibility techniques can reduce the server load, which increases the download speed and can reduce the need for additional bandwidth or servers, as follows:

Enable Content on Different Configurations

Many organizations are increasingly interested in web interoperability and device-independence, such as making their websites work well on mobile phones. Web accessibility can enable web content to be rendered and interacted with on different configurations, including different devices, operating systems, and web browsers, as follows:

Be Prepared for Advanced Web Technologies

Web accessibility can help organizations take advantage of advanced web technologies and be prepared for future web technologies, for example:

Have High Quality Websites

Some developers and organizations pride themselves on producing high quality websites that meet technical standards.Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and other accessibility specifications from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) are widely-recognized international standards. Additional resources addressing the business case for web standards in general are available on the Web.

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