Business Case Suite:
Marketplace
Auxiliary Benefits
Policy Requirements
Cost Factors

Auxiliary Benefits of Accessible Web Design

Note: This draft WAI Resource is under development by W3C/WAI's Education and Outreach Working Group (EOWG). We invite review and discussion. Please address your feedback to wai-eo-editors@w3.org, a mailing list with a public archive. Change log available.

1. Introduction
2. Expand Your Audience
3. Improve Efficiency
4. Demonstrate Social Responsibility
5. Reduce Legal Liability
6. Benefits Matrices
7. Linearised Summary of Benefits
8. References

N.B. red/em text between "()" is marked for deletion

1. Introduction

This document is one of several resources created to help support the argument in favor of (assist the preparation of a business case for) the implementation of Web accessibility. It describes many of the business, technical and other benefits to the organization that can be realized by applying the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) to Web sites. These benefits are above and beyond the straightforward benefits to people with disabilities.

[NB Henk suggested "This document is one of several resources created to assist the preparation of a course, presentation or business case for the implementation of Web accessibility."]

Conformance with WCAG 1.0 (and other W3C guidelines) will enhance the potential reach of your Web site by increasing its general usability; this may result in expanded market share. Adoption of the WCAG 1.0 recommendations also demonstrates your commitment to social responsibility and equity of access to information and services. In addition, implementing many of the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints will directly improve the performance of your Web services and reduce the maintenance effort required.

It should be noted that the following list contains some duplication; a number of the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints clearly benefit more than one general area as highlighted by the benefits matrices at the end of this document. Also note that this document is not an exhaustive list of the wider benefits of accessible web design, but serves to highlight the more common ones.

The intended audience of this document are people preparing business cases for web accessibility. Some familiarity with the topic of web accessibility is assumed, although references to relevant documents are included.

2. Expand Your Audience

Increasing findability (discovery), access to, and usability of your Web site for all visitors is a major benefit from applying many of the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints. Increasing your potential audience may result in increased market share.

OR

A major benefit of from applying the many of the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints will make it easier for your visitors to find the site, access it and use it. Increasing your potential audience may result in increased market share.

2.1 Improve usability for all users

The usability of Web sites is becoming a very important topic as organizations struggle to reach, and retain, a wider audience. Many of the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints are directly related to usability, hence following the guidelines will help you achieve this.

• Clear and consistent navigation - people often avoid a Web site after an initial visit because they encounter difficulties navigating complex collections of information or cannot find (or refind) the item they wanted. Applying the WCAG 1.0 recommendations for clear and consistent navigation will help reduce this problem.
• Device independence because of situational usage - an increasing number of people use a variety of technologies to access the Web and the WCAG 1.0 techniques can expose critical content and facilitate interaction in all these situations:
  • While the primary Web device for some may be a multimedia-capable color-graphics enabled desktop computer with a high-bandwidth connection and a mouse, those same people, and others, may also choose to access the Web with personal digital assistants, mobile phones, or other, less capable Web devices, possibly over lower-bandwidth connections.
  • Some users may find themselves in noisy environments where audio content may not be easily heard; having a text-based alternative becomes critical.
  • In some situations glare on a screen may make seeing video, or even text-based content, difficult so having content that can be rendered with a voice synthesizer can be beneficial.
  • An increasing number of users will access the Web with hands-free (speech to text) or eyes-free (text to speech) devices.
• Clear and understandable content - this will immediately increase the size and breadth of the audience that can benefit from your Web site.
• Text alternatives
  • "D" links and "longdesc" attribute - The message you hope to convey with complex graphics such as photographs, graphs and diagrams may not be immediately obvious to (or even viewable by) some visitors. A clear text description of what the image means or conveys can be a great benefit to your audience.
  • Text descriptions for multimedia files - for any number of reasons (and many are identified in this document) a significant number of users worldwide will not be able to access content contained in multimedia files. Providing alternative text-based content will significantly increase its availability.
  • Text descriptions for other non-HTML files such as PDF and PowerPoint - these non-HTML formats suffer from download issues and/or availability of the 'plugin'. Provision of a text-based alternative (or summary) will increase its availability.
  • Captioning - audio content will not be accessible to all users, e.g. PDA users or those in noisy environments. Providing alternative textual content will significantly increase the number of people who will "hear" your message.
• Color contrast - contrasting colors for page background and text make reading easier. Dark text on a light background may be the best combination for non-visually impaired. Utilizing style sheets for controlling text and background colors allows others to chose the best combination for their needs and current environment (in other words, they may choose one style sheet while at their desktop computer, and another while using their laptop or PDA at a meeting or on an airplane).
• Relative units for markup - avoiding fixed width tables will please you visitors as horizontal scrolling is counterintuitive and losing the last word on the right side of a page when printing is very frustrating. Furthermore, many people like to increase the text size occasionally such as at the end of a tiring day, or if using a colleagues computer that has a smaller default font size than they are comfortable with.

2.2 Support for Low Literacy Levels

In every nation there are significant numbers of people who do not share the same level of literacy as the professionals who design your Web sites and write your content. Following the WCAG 1.0 recommendations can support users who have low literacy levels and those people for whom the language of your Web site is not their first.

• Clear Navigation - adopting a clear, consistent and logical navigation style across your entire Web site assists all users to understand your site and accelerates their familiarity. The possibility of finding the item your visitors is looking for will increase is you provide navigation bars, site-maps and linked tables of contents.
• Clear Content
  • Many studies have shown that most people do not "read" Web pages - at least not onscreen - instead they "scan". With this in mind, the use of simpler language rather than marketing or technical jargon will increase their comprehension, and their satisfaction.
  • Non-text elements such as illustrations and graphs should be relevant to the text, placed nearby the relevant text, and described or introduced within the text.
• Separate structure from presentation - the clear and consistent use of structural markup to convey meaning and structure will assist your visitors in comprehending your site and locating the information of interest or importance to them.

2.3 Improve Findability and Search Engine Rankings

Simply stated, content that is not text-based is generally not available to search engine spiders or other automatic data-mining applications. Much important content on your site may be "locked-up" in unsearchable formats. By exposing this content to the search engines you can significantly increase the chance that people searching for particular content on your site can find it. From a strategic point of view, anything you can do to increase the likelihood that your site will be found is a positive benefit. Information that cannot be found or identified easily is costly.

• Clearer, understandable content - using commonly used and understood words, phrasing and grammar will increase the likelihood that people using simple search-criteria will find your site.
• Text alternatives
  • Alternative text - an image without alt-text can only be found by its file name. In many cases the file name is a cryptic and unhelpful string of characters. Adding short descriptive phrases via alt-text means that search-engines can find particular images because their description has been indexed. The alt-text for images that are about your site's content can help raise your ranking on the search engine's listings.
  • "D" links and "longdesc" attribute - much important content on your site may be locked-up in complex images such as photographs, diagrams, charts or graphs. Describing these more fully on a separate page linked from a "D" link and the "longdesc" attribute makes that content available to search engines.
  • Text descriptions for multimedia files - a text-based description of the action or content of a Web based video or animation will make the important information contained in that expensive and informative medium available to search engines. Otherwise, only the file name is available for reference.
  • Captioning - audio file formats are searchable only by their file names, which as has been mentioned, can be cryptic and unhelpful. Providing full-text captioning (either synchronized with the audio track using SMIL, or as a separate transcript) allows the content, especially for files containing dialog or speech, to be indexed and searched.
• Table summaries - clear summaries describing the purpose of a table will be indexed by a search engine while the table content may actually be less meaningful when indexed cell-by-cell. Furthermore, table captions, by providing a heading for the table, will also be indexed by many search engines.
• Structure documents with markup - some search engine spiders actually use the text within your header tags, e.g.<H1>, <H2> etc., to rank Web pages and accord increased relevance to this text.
• Metadata - following metadata standards for describing documents, and relationships between documents can significantly increase the usefulness of your Web content, both to the people searching for your products or services, and for your own business reporting and filing needs. International standards for metadata are evolving - IMS Global's metadata specification is being used within the education sector and Dublin Core metadata is being widely adopted within the government sector.

2.4 Support for the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is an extension of the current Web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. The Semantic Web will enable data on the Web to be defined and linked in a way that it can be used by machines not just for display purposes, but for automation, integration and reuse of data across various applications. Organizations adopting elements of the Semantic Web will be positioned to increase their audiences as this new technology is developed.

• Metadata is the first implementation of structured information about resources on the Web. Implementations such as "Dublin Core" and "IMS" when adopted widely and implemented through the Resource Description Framework (RDF) will enable machine retrieval and collation of information.
• Separate Structure from Presentation - utilizing structural markup for your information adds definition to your pages in a machine recognizable format, i.e. HTML tags, and will assist the migration from the "World Wide Web" to the "Semantic Web" where agents will be able to glean information from your site.
• Clear Content & Text Alternatives - for business, the Semantic Web expands the market place through the clarity of the meta data during seamless content management in all alternative routes "anytime anywhere". Following the WAI guidelines ensures clear alternative routes, by way of the Semantic Web, to textual meanings archived in data bases.
• Device independence - Web sites that adopt the principles of device independence will be well positioned to add semantics allowing the filtering and selecting of relevant content for devices with lower bandwidth or those requiring different navigation approaches. - delete or can someone suggest a rewording?

2.5 Repurpose content for multiple formats or devices

In the continually evolving world of Web applications and Web technologies it makes sense to design your content and service so that it can be adapted quickly and efficiently to meet any new circumstance. Using existing design techniques like those recommended in WCAG 1.0 will ensure that your message will be readily available to your changing (and expanding) customer base and any new technologies they may choose.

Separate structure and semantics from presentation. If you markup or provide content that is intimately linked with one particular display or access technology, your content is likely to be inaccessible or unusable on other technologies. The ideal situation is one in which you provide the content (structure and semantics) separately from the presentation of the information. You can then more easily create alternate layouts for different Web devices and alternate views that can be chosen by the client, or let the differing Web devices render the content in the way that best suits their capabilities.

• Use of styles - master style sheets (files on your server containing style markup relating to all pages on a site) allows quick and comprehensive changes to the overall look and feel of your site. A style sheet file can contain display instructions for numerous display technologies. This means that instead of having to reedit every content page of your site to meet the needs of a new technology, only the master style sheet files need to be changed. Style sheets also allow different presentation to be made available for different devices or end purposes such as screen and printer or report and lecture presentation.
• Color independence - avoiding using just color to highlight important features or differentiate features on your pages will enable your content to be more easily made available on devices that cannot display color, or situations such as the outdoors where color differences may not be perceivable.
• Use of XHTML & XML - use of these emerging language specifications (in conjunction with the appropriate use of style sheets) will make automatic conversions of content for alternative display even easier. XHTML and XML are ideally suited to machine manipulation of information.
• Avoiding deprecated features of HTML - many of the earlier markup features of HTML have been dropped in later releases in favor of controlling these aspects of the presentation though styles or style sheets. Applying valid HTML will assist you repurpose content for future formats and devices.

2.6 Increase support for Internationalization

In an expanding global marketplace, ignoring or alienating potential clients or customers in other countries may be detrimental to your business. WCAG 1.0 describes a number of techniques that can enhance your ability to reach this global audience.

• Captioning of audio/video in multiple languages - for organizations with multinational clients, providing low cost captioning of audio and video content in other languages can be an effective method of reaching that wider audience. Translation and captioning are, in most cases, less costly than producing complete alternative language versions of the more expensive media.
• Redundancy of another modality to assist understanding/comprehension - a multilingual user may be less comfortable when absorbing content that is not available in their primary language. Available alternate language content can aid their comprehension of your message.
• Clearer, more understandable, content - when targeting an international marketplace, using localized jargon, idiom or culturally restricted concepts in your content may make your message seem unfriendly or confusing. Simple, clear language and usage will often translate more easily.

2.7 Assisting access for low-bandwidth users

Providing alternative content that is appropriate for low-bandwidth connections is a market-increasing strategy. While affordable, available high-bandwidth technology is becoming a reality for some Web users, by far the majority of the world's users are limited to low-bandwidth connections because of geographical isolation, underdeveloped communications infrastructure, or economic limitation. Even those living in areas with access to high-bandwidth infrastructure may still be limited to low-bandwidth applications because of the technology they have chosen to use (such as cell-phones, PDAs, etc.) or are forced by economic circumstances to use less capable (e.g. older) equipment.

• Alternative text, "D" links and "longdesc" attributes - many page authors want to use large images such as photographs, charts and graphs to illustrate concepts or supplement the content of a document. A long established technique to aid low-bandwidth users is to provide a small (thumbnail) version that is linked to the full-sized image. But if the bandwidth is severely restricted, a text-based alternative will be welcomed by the user.
• Text alternatives for multimedia - a few megabytes of video or audio media may often be summarized and described in a few thousand bytes of text-based content. The bandwidth savings can be immense. The users, should they choose, may download the full multimedia presentations but are pleased to have the option of reading the alternative.
• Use of style sheets - separating stylistic mark up and presentation from content, especially in a master style sheet file, can significantly reduce the size of individual pages being served across the Internet. A master style sheet file is read into the browser's local cache once and is available instantly to all pages that refer to it.
• Clear navigation and links - providing clear and consistent navigation and clearly identifying the target of each link is a major benefit to users who have to utilize low bandwidth and wait for each page to load slowly as they can get to the information or service they require more efficiently rather than following "blind alleys" with the associated frustration. Clear link destinations are especially important when they lead to non-html files such as PDF or Flash.

3. Improve Efficiency

While the previous section highlights features that will increase your audience, the following section describes potential benefits to your operational processes and technical procedures of applying the WCAG 1.0 techniques.

3.1 Reduce site maintenance

Site development and maintenance costs are an ongoing concern for businesses. Applying design techniques that can reduce these costs is a strategic move. Another concern is the rapidly changing Web technology market. WCAG 1.0 gives you many techniques that you can apply to help you meet the challenge afforded by these changes.

• Separating structure from presentation - from a development and maintenance perspective most content benefits from following a well-designed logical structure. This internal structure makes editing or modifications easier to accomplish because the original intent is made clearer from the inherent structure. However, it is not always necessary or advisable (from a marketing point of view) to display the content in the same structure as it is written. By separating structure from presentation you are able to manipulate the content to suit differing presentation styles without having to change the content. This reduces the amount of coding necessary when modifications are required.
• Style sheets vs. in-line markup - extensive use of inline HTML stylistic techniques, or even inline style markup, can make review and repair of code problems very time consuming. Moving all style-related markup to style sheet files makes debugging stylistic problems easier (since you know exactly where the offending markup resides) and makes problems in the content files easier to locate (because you are not wading through long strings of confusing stylistic markup).
• Text alternatives - for people maintaining your site there is another benefit of using text-alternatives for image, object and multimedia content: descriptive alt-text can significantly aid the editing, updating and quality assurance processes by identifying the non-text content more easily.
• XML and other evolving W3C technologies - the benefits described in this document will be realized if the concepts expressed in WCAG 1.0 are applied to any Web application development: not just to designs using HTML. The WAI has published papers about the accessibility features of XML, SVG and SMIL that make their benefits clear.
• Upgraded authoring software - authoring tools that supports WAI standards will set you up for the future with better code requiring less maintenance.
• Device independence - Web sites adopting this approach will require less adaptation to create multiple versions and incur lower ongoing maintenance costs.

3.2 Site Search Engine Improvements

Clearer content and the inclusion of alt-text with your images and other non-text elements will assist all visitors to your site to utilize your search facilities if they cannot locate the information or services they seek through normal navigation means. Depending on the search engine you deploy, metadata, structural markup and multimedia captioning can also contribute to improved resource findability (discovery) within your site. If your customers' searching is more successful, they will not need to use more resource-consuming technical or business support services.

3.3 Repurposing Content

The adoption of device independent practices will enhance your ability to repurpose your content for use on the evolving range of Web enabled devices from WAP-enabled phones to PDAs to in-car devices. Techniques include the separation of structure from presentation, and ensuring that content relevance and importance is not portrayed through color alone.

3.4 Address server-load

With increasing traffic on the Internet, many organizations are discovering their server performance may not be keeping up with client demand. WCAG 1.0 techniques can help reduce the load being placed on your server.

• Style sheets - the use of separate, or master, style sheets will reduce the size of the content pages that your server has to send out. Furthermore, the style sheet files containing the presentation and layout code will be cached locally on the requesters local machine.
• Clear navigation - reduces circling around looking for the desired information or service resulting in fewer HTTP requests on your server. Including better defined & clearer links, and the consistent use of graphics to indicate key features and functions, will result in fewer requests to your server
• Text alternatives (alt-attribute, longdesc-attribute, "D" links) - the inclusion of some or all of these WCAG 1.0 techniques may encourage more of your bandwidth or technology-challenged visitors to browse your site with "graphics off". They will be better able to understand the nature and purpose of any graphics and selectively request them. This will reduce your server load as a lower number of graphics files are being requested by visitors who do not want to, or cannot, see them.

3.5 Address server-bandwidth

With increasing traffic on the Internet, server-bandwidth can also be inadequate to meet client demand. Again, WCAG 1.0 techniques can help reduce the load being placed on your server connections.

• Clear navigation - will assist your visitors in reaching their destination more quickly, resulting in less pages being requested over your limited bandwidth and giving the user a more satisfying experience through better response and more quickly retrieved pages.
• Text alternatives - bandwidth is a limitation through technology or economic circumstances for some people. Providing a site that at least some of your users will be happy to visit with their graphics disabled will reduce the traffic on your internet connection.
• Separating structure from presentation - providing the presentation instructions for your pages in a style sheet means that your pages will be smaller in size and impose less strain on your limited bandwidth.

4. Demonstrate Social Responsibility

Some benefits to an organization, such as goodwill from the general public, may be less tangible than the economic or technical ones described earlier. However, in an extremely competitive world-marketplace can any benefits be ignored?

• Increasing the accessibility of your Web site and online services to a wide range of people with disabilities and other disadvantaged members of the community will reinforce your organization's socially responsible attitude.
• All countries have significant numbers of people with disabilities - they comprise an influential proportion of the population. The population in many countries is also ageing, and with older age the incidence of disabilities increases; in many countries as many as 50% of people over 65 years have disabilities.
• Raising awareness of the requirements of people with disabilities through the creation and promotion of an accessible Web site and associated online services can help to influence your internal operations and attitudes, thus creating a workplace that is more attractive and accessible to people with disabilities.
• Many of your staff members may be accessing your online system from a slower home-based connection. Increased site access speed will improve staff satisfaction and efficiency. - DISCUSS Charmane's suggestion. Maybe it goes under the Efficiency heading?

5. Reduce Legal Liability

In many countries around the world discrimination laws require governments, educational institutes, corporations and businesses to provide equal opportunities for people with disabilities. This may include equal access to electronic information and services in the same way that physical access to facilities is required. The laws vary from country to country and a listing of country specific laws and policies is maintained by WAI.

Having your programmers and developers incorporate the WCAG 1.0 checkpoints into your Web site design from an early stage will be more efficient, and cheaper, than doing so after protracted legal proceedings.

Furthermore, an increasing number of industry organizations in various countries are developing accessibility codes of practice or industry policies. If your organization or company is a member of such an organization its continuing membership may depend on adopting those practices. SHOULD THIS BE MOVED TO SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (within the workplace?) OR EVEN TO EFFICIENCY?

6. Benefits Matrices

The following tables indicate the interactions between the various WCAG 1.0 checkpoints and benefits related to market reach and technical efficiency.

Alternative, linear version of benefits tables.

YES in a cell in the following tables indicates that we have included more information earlier in this document to describe the business benefit of the WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint. The YES cells are linked to the appropriate places in the earlier text. A blank cell indicates that we have not discussed this issue in the document.

Alternative, linear version of tables.

Last Updated: 20 August, 2002. Prepared by Andrew Arch (Andrew.Arch@visionaustralia.org.au) and Chuck Letourneau (cpl@starlingweb.com) with assistance from W3C/WAI's EOWG members. About WAI: The Web Accessibility Initiative is supported in part by Sponsors. Opinions expressed in this document do not necessarily represent those of the sponsoring organizations.