Corporate Accessibility

Corporate Accessibility

Good web development and standards based development, which one is right or wrong ? If a web application is compliant to web standards based development, will that be fine to call it as a good web development ?Do corporations really put time and money in making the website fully accessible web app ? And what point is called 'accessibly compliant' web app ? Ensuring if it's achieved AA or AAA ? I found a interesting article about these details:

One problem with corporate accessibility is that while corporations generally care about accessibility in the abstract. which can lead to a grudging attempt to be accessible, because a corporate lawyer will naturally try to do the minimum required to stay in compliance; minimizing risk while minimizing costs.

The way to overcome this is to focus on the customer. I find the following arguments successful in getting accessibility discussed in a positive, “good-to-have” way rather than in a legal compliance “oh-well-if-we-must” way:

• Accessibility is good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Accessibility enhances usability for everyone. An April 2004 formal investigation into UK web accessibility (PDF) reported "all users, not just disabled people, would benefit greatly from the measures required to make sites accessible and usable by blind people".
• Accessibility has many quantifiable business benefits (PDF). Legal and General, a British financial services company, redesigned its site with accessibility in mind and found:
  • 40% traffic increase
  • Doubled conversion rates
  • Doubled online revenue
  • 100% ROI in 5 months

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