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

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1. Introducing Accessibility
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3. Managing Accessibility
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      1. Social Factors
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      3. Financial Factors
      4. Financial Factors
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[Draft] Resources for Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization

This page is is an appendix to Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization.

Resources are for information purposes only, no endorsement implied.

Case Studies of Accessibility Improvments

• Tesco Access Site - 35 thousand pounds to build, 13 million pounds a year in resultant revenue [case study details coming] (2004, UK)
• Legal & General Group - doubled the number of visitors, cut maintenance costs by two thirds, increased natural search traffic by 50% [reference in case study] (2007, UK)
• CNET - Reported 30% increase in CNET traffic from Google after they started providing transcripts.[@@] We saw a significant increase in SEO referrals when we launched an HTML version of our site, the major component of which was our transcripts. - Justin Eckhouse, CNET, 2009

Statistics on People with Disabilities and E-Commerce

• The Market for Accessible Technology - Research by Forrester, commissioned by Microsoft. Example: Among current US computer users who range from 18 to 64 years old, 57% (74.2 million) are likely or very likely to benefit from the use of accessible technology due to difficulties and impairments that may impact computer use.
• Industry sector case studies: ecommerce - a round up of data from a number of sources by the UK Employers Forum on Disability. Example: 71% of UK disabled people use the internet to find information on goods and services.

Accessibility Improving Search Engine Optimization

• SEO and Accessibility Overlap - an article detailing many of the overlaps between accessibility guidelines and best practice for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Webmaster World Forum: General Search Engine Promotion and Marketing Issues - a lengthy thread of discussion of the applicability of the WCAG 2.0 techniques documents to 'on-page SEO'.

Example for ROI calculations

• Brinck, T. Return on Goodwill: Return on Investment for Accessibility. In Cost-justifying usability By Randolph G. Bias, Deborah J. Mayhew eds. 2005. - Example calculation gives a market increase of 8% and an ROI of 2.4:1

Cautionary Tales of Inaccessibility

When organizations do not make their website accessible, they risk legal action and negative publicity, as the cases studies below illustrate.

• Sydney Olympic Games - required to pay 20 thousand dollars in damages due to poor accessibility (2000, Australia)
• Target Corporation - paid 6 million dollars in damages after action by US National Federation for the Blind (2008, USA)
• Amex - America Express hit the headlines after excluding visually impaired customers due to making its statements less accessible in a format change (2008, UK). [@@ref]

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Document Information

Content last updated: $Date: 2009/11/08 01:13:04 $ [changelog]
Editor: Liam McGee and Shawn Lawton Henry. Developed by the Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG).

[Contacting WAI] Feedback welcome to wai-eo-editors@w3.org (a publicly archived list).