Well done!
Very well written and timely article! I give my left nut for articles like these, vs those 100 of 100 lists of bullshit we so often see.

I take a negative position however (yes, it’s me, live with it!) with the following:

  * Building accessible websites doesn’t, and shouldn’t, cost any more.
 
No, it costs more.
In the same way as looking out for pedestrians crossing the street costs more when you are trying to get to that urgent appointment in downtown traffic!
Or put another way, everything COSTS and the decision you always have to make is not between free/not-free but expensive, not-so-expensive!

Target was recently sued by several blind associations, in retrospect having a fking BULLSEYE as your corporate logo kinda makes you a TARGET, doesnt it??
But their site had blatantly few accommodations for the blind and was not navigable to those with screen reader technology. The settlement cost target approx 8 million dollars plus fees. But for most people, without that exposure legally, it’s actually cheaper and better business sense to say “f*ck the blind/disabled” and, like running over jaywalkers in Grand Theft Auto, escape w/o penalty.

  * Building accessible websites hardly takes much longer, and if done properly will probably save time in the future.
whoa.

ANY FEATURE adds exponentially to your testing regimen.
Accessibility is more than a feature, its a very innate internal construct, kinda like “knowing” that green, blues and yellows are NOT good colors for MEAT tho they work well in FRUIT!!

case in point: you ever see those websites with that nice accessibility feature - the ability to change the size of text???
wow! cool!

Look closer! The feature requires FINE MOTOR CONTROL WITH THE MOUSE to click on the varying sizes of “a A A” to resize the fonts, and yeah, it requires JAVASCRIPT (did I mention though it didnt work in Opera, one of the few browsers with innate Text to Speech capability??)

There are color combinations THAT JUST DONT EXIST for many people, and just because something can be read by a screen reader, that dont mean it’ll make ANY FRIGGIN SENSE!
(you ever see some of those image alt-texts on some sites?? “picture, 420x120”)

  * You don’t have to build multiple versions of your site (unless you’re going for a Flash and a HTML version). Your sites should be perfectly adaptable to different types of browsers, screen resolutions and tailored to different users in one fell swoop.

  * Building accessible sites does not restrict you as a designer. Your sites can be as fancy as you want with imagery, typography, scripts, animation, hybrid layouts etc and still be accessible.
Ummm,..... IT DOES restrict you as a designer, but THAT IS A GOOD THING.
Accessibility design (overlaid on your overall site functionality design) forces you to use an OCCAM’S RAZOR approach (This is often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.”)

  * Accessibility is not just catered to disabled people. It affects all users. It considers people with slightly poor vision or motor skills, people using mobile web browsers, screen readers, text-only browsers, search-engine robots, people who are temporarily disabled and the list goes on. Do you realize what a massive portion of the web-browsing population this covers?

This is the true gem of the article!
BUT - I’ll take you a step further: The market is larger than you realize!
A website that people can navigate, sans sight - can also be navigated by a sighted person while driving, while jogging, while having sex! The possibilities are endless!

What an amazing post! I would like to thank you for sharing your thoughts. You are putting very good effort into the stuff you post. Keep up the good work
Cheers,
Bed and Breakfast Website Design