In message <opsih4okmix5vgts@zoete_b>
Barbara de Zoete said:
It's their loss. If they find out that they can get to that marketshare
with ease and no extra cost at all, they will.
I don't agree that the marketshare would increase by 20%.
Even if the proportion of computer-using people who can't mouse is 20%,
which I doubt [1], only a proportion of these will have the disposable
income to make them a possible market for many 'non-essential goods'
suppliers. Even a friend who was very well off (by our standards) soon found
he didn't have as much disposable income as before after he'd made the
necessary adaptations to his house when he became ill.
That law about accessibility in the UK makes a lot of things silly:
Ex 1 My sister managed a University Hall of Residence. They had to spend a
huge amount of money (over 50,000UKP) so that the whole Hall and every part
of it was wheelchair accessible. They've never had a student in a
wheelchair, and won't now, as the Uni has sold the building to developers,
who won't use the accessibility work done as they are completely changing
the interior for another use. That's £50,000 of taxpayers' money down the
drain.
Ex 2 My husband teaches an Introduction to Ornithology course to adults.
When he sets out the course plan for the brochure, all places he visits must
be wheelchair accessible, which more-or-less limits him to public parks,
which because of the number of people visiting aren't the best places to see
birds. By definition, many of the best places to see birds are on private
land, and not wheelchair accessible. So on the first day with each new
class, he watches them come in and takes them a walk in a wheelchair
accessible park, watching to see if any seem to have difficulties with
mobility. When they get back to the room, he puts it to them that they
change the scheduled programme to visit the better places. He knows that
more people would probably sign up if the other places were listed in the
brochure!
In the 'old days' you just had to say "participants should have a reasonable
level of physical fitness and wear stout walking shoes, since some paths are
rough."
All the above is not an argument for not making sites (web or physical)
accessible, and I do realise that I could find myself in a wheelchair or
worse tomorrow - but in that case, my 'discretionary' disposable income will
be very low - not enough to make me a target audience for anyone other than
Tescos (UK supermarket).
My sister, who because of the work in her Hall is well up on these things,
seems to think that this legislation will soon extend to the rest of the EU,
if it doesn't already. When we were at Pompeii, she observed that they'll
'have to get rid of the cobbles' in the streets - and particularly the
'stepping stones'. I really, really hope the legislation doesn't extend that
far: that would be taking away the essential 'suchness' of Pompeii.
(On our bus tour from Rome there was a lady in a wheelchair, but as she was
also blind, and only spoke Spanish (the tour was in English and German), I'm
not sure what she hoped to get out of the trip anyway. She stayed in the
visitor centre and listened to the video.)
[1] Having read on the thread to Dylan's post, I suspect that a lot of the
20% have 'cognition' difficulties, which as we've already noted on another
thread is a different problem altogether, and much more difficult to deal
with. People with serious cognition difficulties also are less likely to
have much of a discretionary disposable income.
Liz
