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Access Is Not So Hard

But developing an accessible site is pricey only if you're redesigning a large site from the ground up, contends Kynn Bartlett, director of the HTML Writers Guild's Accessible Web Authoring Resources and Education Center and a Web site accessibility consultant. "We're not talking about doubling the cost of your site; we're talking about adding 1 or 2 percent to its cost and increasing your audience by 20 percent," he says.

Other Webmasters fear that making a site accessible means replacing attractive graphics with an austere look and a big typeface. Bartlett says that's a myth. "I tell people, don't take down Java, don't get rid of that animation--just add an alternative."

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines released by the World Wide Web Consortium call for simple changes, such as describing graphics and audio using text and providing alternatives to applets and scripts. Such tweaks result in a site that's easily navigable by many assistive tools. They also make a site friendly to those with a wide variety of disabilities, including visual, auditory, cognitive, and motor impairments.

Signs of Progress

For now, many sites remain oblivious to the problem. But the news isn't all bad. Judy Brewer, director of the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative, says that a number of sites are beginning to consider it. "I think that in probably half of those companies [that PC World contacted], people are already working on Web accessibility, but word hasn't spread through the organization."

Some companies have made progress. Microsoft, for instance, is gradually improving its sites. "The [W3C] guidelines are not rocket science, but they're not that easy to figure out how to apply in some cases," says Dick Brown, program manager for Web accessibility at Microsoft.

IBM is also revising its Web site as part of a companywide initiative to make all its products accessible. Kim Stephens, Webmaster at IBM's accessibility center, says that the biggest challenge has been educating employees on the importance of Web accessibility. "We've found that one of the most effective motivators is to let someone hear how their Web page sounds [when recited by a screen reader]. When they hear how broken it sounds, [it inspires] them to change it."

In many cases, smaller sites can move more quickly than big ones. Consider Coffee Anyone?, a mom-and-pop site operated by Norman and Rosemary Belssner. Until they started corresponding with customers, the Belssners were unaware that many were blind. They hadn't known about site accessibility but were surprised at how easy it was to implement.

"The problems [customers] were having were subtle," explains Norman Belssner. "We didn't have some shopping cart buttons labeled, for example." The changes he made were simple and took minutes. "Creating accessibility in a brick-and-mortar environment is far more challenging than adding accessibility to your Web site," concludes Belssner, who says revamping the site has helped his company's bottom line.