We look at the factors that can determine the cost of making your website accessible. Studies have shown that when you address accessibility issues at the beginning of your project, you can save a significant amount of time and expense as opposed to waiting until the end of website development.
Accessibility is also about how well things work on your website. The more rework that is required to improve the usability of your site, the more you will have to spend in the end. Making sure people can use your website in an accessible way from the beginning can avoid hassle and major setbacks down the road.
Web accessibility costs too much. One of the most common reasons that businesses don’t want to implement accessibility on their websites is that it costs too much. Well, businesses are right. If accessibility isn’t considered at any point before the site is finished, accessibility will probably cost a lot in rework.
But, if accessibility is considered at the very beginning of the project, and kept in mind throughout, it can be very affordable. It’s all about the amount of rework required to make the website accessible.
Always consider accessibility at the beginning of your project
Let’s look at an analogy. Accessibility for a website is a lot like plumbing for a house. If you consider plumbing at the very beginning, before you even draw up the blueprints for the house, then plumbing costs less than 5 percent of the house budget. But, if you build the entire house and then say, it would be great if the faucet’s turned on then you will have an absolutely massive amount of rework to do.
You’ll have to remove all the cabinets, rip open the walls and floors, install the plumbing, and then put everything back together again. If you consider plumbing at the very beginning of the project, then it’s very affordable and cost effective.
But if you don’t, it can be massive. The same is true of a website. If you consider accessibility at the very beginning, studies have shown that accessibility can account for less than 5 percent of your project budget, but only if you consider it at the beginning.
Studies have shown that accessibility issues found at the end of development can cost 100 times more than if those same issues were found at the beginning. That lines up with our plumbing example. Since accessibility requires fundamental building blocks of the website to be written in a certain way. If they aren’t, then they have to be removed and replaced with new ones.
Does your website work?
Accessibility is also about whether or not a website works, just like plumbing is about whether or not a house is usable, whether or not faucets work. Without accessibility on a website, there are numerous people for whom the website just doesn’t work.
Just like in a house, the faucets just don’t turn on. In fact, many people without disabilities prefer websites that are accessible because they are easier to navigate, understand, and things just work. So the next time you hear accessibility costs too much, understand that its costs are directly related to the amount of rework required.
If you consider accessibility early and at every phase, then you avoid the rework. and can save yourself a lot of money and frustration.
Thanks for watching. I’m Gen Herres from the Easy A11y Guide, where we try to make web accessibility easier to implement through done for you tools and processes.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. You can subscribe to our channel for more accessibilities tips. For more information on web accessibility, including tools, tutorials, and more, please visit easya11yguide. com. I look forward to seeing you again soon.