For the Blind, a Welcoming Web
From: Business Week - 10/27/2004
By: Sarah Lacy

Advocates for the blind are working to entice rather than exhort companies to
make their Web sites and services accessible to the visually impaired, in
accordance with voluntary guidelines established by the World Wide Web
Consortium in 1999. A year earlier, the federal government revised the
Rehabilitation Act to include compliance with certain basic Web-site
accessibility criteria, but most disability advocacy groups think the
14-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be instituted as the
legal standard for Web accessibility; some of the more combative disability
supporters, such as New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, have been using
the ADA as legal leverage to goad companies to comply. However, Bradley
Hodges of the National Federation of the Blind reports that organizations
such as his would prefer to resolve the issue collaboratively, rather than
involve the courts or the federal government. With such groups consulting
with companies, the results are more likely to benefit the visually
handicapped, the argument goes. The Nielsen Norman Group's Jakob Nielsen
estimates that the ranks of companies with accessible Web sites swell by a
mere 4 percent every year. Implementing site accessibility for blind people
can be a costly endeavor if a company is not already engaged in a site
redesign. Forrester Research pegs a Web site retrofit at roughly $160,000. On
the other hand, vendors of Web site usability and accessibility compliance
tools such as Watchfire are reporting brisk sales of their products. 

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041027_6496_db016.htm