Responses to Section E. Cost and Benefits of Web Site Regulations (Questions 12, 13, 14 , 15 and 16)

E. Cost and Benefits of Web Site Regulations

Executive Order 12866 requires Federal agencies to submit “significant regulatory action” to the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review and approval prior to publication in the Federal Register. See E.O. 12866, 58 FR 51735 (Sept. 30, 1993), as amended; OMB Budget Circular A 4, http://www.whitehouse.gov/OMB/circulars/a004/a-4.pdf (Sept. 17, 2003) (last visited June 29, 2010). A proposed regulatory action is deemed to be “economically significant” under section 3(f)(1) of Executive Order 12866 if it has an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more. Id. Regulatory actions that are deemed to be economically significant must include a formal regulatory analysis--a report analyzing the economic costs and benefits of the regulatory action. A formal cost-benefit analysis must include both qualitative and quantitative measurements of the benefits and costs of the proposed rule as well as a discussion of each potentially effective and reasonably feasible alternative. Since this is an ANPRM, the Department is not required to conduct certain economic analyses or written assessments that otherwise may be required for other more formal types of agency regulatory actions (e.g., notices of proposed rulemaking or final rules). If any proposed rule the Department issues regarding Web access is likely to have an economically significant impact on the economy, the Department will prepare a formal regulatory analysis.Show citation box

Question 12. What data source do you recommend to assist the Department in estimating the number of public accommodations (i.e., entities whose operations affect commerce and that fall within at least one of the 12 categories of public accommodations listed above) and State and local governments to be covered by any Web site accessibility regulations adopted by the Department under the ADA? Please include any data or information regarding entities the Department might consider limiting coverage of, as discussed in the “coverage limitations” section above.

Data for the number of entities contained in each of the twelve categories and State and local governments should be available through the Census Bureau or Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are likely to be other Federal sources of information as well, including the Department of Commerce and private or non-profit sources. The latter may provide employee counts should there be an interest in implementing safe harbor or small-entity limitations. The number of individuals with disabilities accessing these sites will vary according to their customer base.

A fall 2007 survey by the Accessibility/Usability IT group of the CIC (Big Ten schools) indicated that students with disabilities seeking assistance were approximately 2.5% of total enrollment. To put this in context, a survey by the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign determined that the 3% of its students asking for assistance represented approximately 1/3 of all students with disabilities. The other 2/3 either were not aware that services were available or chose not to ask for help. Assuming that these percentages hold for CIC schools, approximately 7.5% of students have a disability, and would potentially benefit from the extension of ADA requirements to public service entities. This equates to approximately 1.37 million students in the United States (U.S. Department of Education, 2007: 18,248,128 from "The Almanac of Higher Education," The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 28, 2009).

ADA public service categories:

• 1. An inn, hotel, motel, or other place of lodging, except for an establishment located within a building that contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and that is actually occupied by the proprietor of the establishment as the residence of the proprietor;

  2. A restaurant, bar, or other establishment serving food or drink;

  3. A motion picture house, theater, concert hall, stadium, or other place of exhibition or entertainment;

  4. An auditorium, convention center, lecture hall, or other place of public gathering;

  5. A bakery, grocery store, clothing store, hardware store, shopping center, or other sales or rental establishment

  6. A laundromat, dry-cleaner, bank, barber shop, beauty shop, travel service, shoe repair service, funeral parlor, gas station, office of an accountant or lawyer, pharmacy, insurance office, professional office of a health care provider, hospital, or other service establishment;

  7. A terminal, depot, or other station used for specified public transportation;

  8. A museum, library, gallery, or other place of public display or collection;

  9. A park, zoo, amusement park, or other place of recreation;

  10. A nursery, elementary, secondary, undergraduate, or postgraduate private school, or other place of education;

  11. A day care center, senior citizen center, homeless shelter, food bank, adoption agency, or other social service center establishment;

  12. A gymnasium, health spa, bowling alley, golf course, or other place of exercise or recreation

Question 13. What are the annual costs generally associated with creating, maintaining, operating, and updating a Web site? What additional costs are associated with creating and maintaining an accessible Web site? Please include estimates of specific compliance and maintenance costs (software, hardware, contracting, employee time, etc.). What, if any, unquantifiable costs can be anticipated from amendments to the ADA regulations regarding Web site access?

Annual costs associated with creating, maintaining, operating and updating a Web site

Providing numbers, percentages, and estimates is difficult due to the lack of formal research or data comparing the costs of creating accessible/compliant Web resources versus non-accessible non-compliant ones. A “best guess,” based on anecdotal information and the experiences of Web accessibility advocates, is that adding 10 to 15 percent in staff costs to is reasonable. A better answer is that “it depends.” Costs of creating and maintaining an accessible Web resource vary, depending on the following:

• • the size of the organization

  • the skill and knowledge of web developers and designers

  • the site’s information architecture

  • the site’s size, complexity, and maintenance schedule

Once accessibility compliance is in place, ongoing staff training and professional development costs should be no greater than before the site redesign. It is critical that staff get ongoing training to ensure that they keep pace with changing technologies, new standards, and the constantly evolving protocols for accessibility testing. However, this is no different than in other areas of information technology, such as security and data management.

Addressing accessibility early on in design and development is significantly less expensive than retrofitting a Web site. Many obstacles to accessibility can be removed at the simple markup level, including such basics as alt tags, page titles, headings, and lists. (Of course, complexity increases when rich applications, Flash, and more complicated scripting are part of a Web resource.) Early attention to accessibility pays other important dividends: higher success rates when using automated testing systems, and greater ease and speed of redesigns.

Costs of updating (retrofitting to make accessible) Web sites

If accessibility is addressed late in design, required changes can be very costly. Improving the accessibility of existing Web sites requires significant one-time costs beyond normal maintenance costs. And if continued professional development is not addressed, the institution’s Web site will not remain accessible. Training is critical. In many cases, informal and inappropriate training of Web developers has led to significant accessibility issues. Following standards shortens site development time and makes pages easier to maintain. Debugging and troubleshooting are also easier.

Unquantifiable benefits anticipated from amendments to the ADA regulations

Making the Web accessible to people with disabilities also provides significant benefits to those without disabilities. There are significant overlaps in designing for accessibility and, for example, in designing for mobile devices and search engine optimization. Furthermore, what works well for people with disabilities benefits the ever-growing aging population. Other and more difficult to measure advantages and benefits of an accessible and compliant Web site include the following:

• • Maintaining a positive public image

  • Increasing access

  • Conforming to laws or regulations

  • Preventing litigation

The effects of lawsuits and litigation should be included in the overall costs of Web resource development. Cost-benefit assessments for accessibility should also include the effects on an organization’s public image and a market analysis of the risks and benefits of providing Web access to all or denying access to any.

The Internet is no longer optional. An accessible web is essential for participating in education, employment, commerce, civics, health and safety. Changes to ADA regarding Web accessibility will affect future generations of Web programmers and managers and increase access for people with disabilities, the elderly and others.

For more information on the social, technical, financial, legal, and policy factors that affect a decision to incorporate accessibility, see “Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization: Overview” (http://www.w3.org/WAI/bcase), developed by the W3C Web Accessibility initiative. A University of Vienna study estimates the absolute and relative total accessibility costs (based on size of organization and a Web site’s level of complexity) and the relative savings for accessible Web sites based on increased reach (audience). The study concludes “that costs are likely to be dominated by benefits . . . and improving the accessibility of a Web site is an easy-to-attain, cost-effective business opportunity.” (Source: A Cost-Benefit Approach for Accessible Web Presence, Valeska Heerdt and Christine Strauss. University of Vienna, Department of Business Studies, Volume 3118/2004, 626, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-27817-7_49 www.springerlink.com/index/d5jy0ewplea12d4x.pd.)

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Incurred costs of litigation are quantifiable, as finance and budget-related offices in any institution keep close track of legal fees, staff and administration costs; cost of training and upgrading professional competencies; and the costs of new services and processes to make faculty and student-generated content accessible. And of course, there are the potential punitive costs.

In addition to the fix-it costs for web sites, there are costs of enterprise systems replacement. Organizations purchase a great deal of enterprise-level software, from LMS to business process tools. New purchasing processes must be in place; the cost of data migration strategies and implementation will be huge. These are entirely quantifiable as well.

Question 14. What are the benefits that can be anticipated from action by the Department to amend the ADA regulations to address Web site accessibility? Please include anticipated benefits for individuals with disabilities, businesses, and other affected parties, including benefits that cannot be fully monetized or otherwise quantified.

The plain intent of the ADA, that public accommodations must be open to persons with disabilities, is in itself a reflection of the country's best vision of itself as is embodied in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Where some may argue that "equality of access" may not be an inalienable right, it is easy to argue that without equality of access, these inalienable rights are diminished. Today, lack of access to the web is nearly as excluding as lack of access to physical facilities. By amending ADA regulations to explicitly include web accessibility, persons with disabilities gain the full measure of the enormous benefit to knowledge, society and commerce embodied in the Web.

Clearly, extending ADA to include public vendors and services willhave a very dramatic and positive impact on the ability of students,faculty and staff to be able to use the web as part of theireducational and employment activities in higher education. These individuals' use of the web cannot easily be confined to sites built within higher education. Commercial vendors and public information services used within higher education for research, course delivery, and business transactions are outside of the control of higher education web accessibility policies. It is critical that people with disabilities be able to access and fully participate in these services and resources.

Extending ADA to the web also will increase the feedback to these vendors as a wider range of users ask for accessibility. The more web sites are required to be accessible, the more the skills and expectations and the skills of people with disabilities will be raised.

Both commercial enterprises and educational institutions will gain from the collective intelligence and perspective of this currently-underserved population. Businesses with accessible web sites will gain from a larger marketplace that includes individuals with disabilities, users of mobile devices, and those finding the sites via search engines. In short, all users will benefit.

Question 15. What, if any, are the likely or potential unintended consequences (positive or negative) of Web site accessibility requirements? For example, would the costs of a requirement to provide captioning to videos cause covered entities to provide fewer videos on their Web sites?

Overall, the benefits of creating accessible web sites are far reaching.

Accessible sites are better optimized to be discovered and accurately indexed by search engines. In addition, the more accessible a site is, the more likely it will be of use to a larger number of devices running on a larger number of platforms.

And, the benefits for all users are great. As the nation's population ages, accessible sites will help ensure that more individuals can remain productive for a longer period of time. The availability of accessible sites can enhance the job market for individuals with disabilities, as well as those in rural areas where transportation is difficult if not impossible. Enabling a site’s information to be spoken aloud, for example, can bring that information to a large cadre of individuals who have had little access for reasons that can include literacy issues, reading disabilities, and linguistic barriers.

While the expense of captioning and/or providing audio descriptionsfor videos or transcriptions of audio is real, it is one of the fewareas of accessibility in which there is additional cost. Short-term,this accessibility requirement may cause displacement of some onlinevideo. However, a requirement to provide captioning on videos willaccelerate innovation. As demand increases to provide compelling, yetaccessible, online experiences, enterprising developers ofvideo-authoring applications will invest in speech-to-text technologiesto deliver first-draft captions into video editing workflow.

Question 16. Are there any other effective and reasonably feasible alternatives to making the Web sites of public accommodations accessible that the Department should consider? If so, please provide as much detail about these alternatives, including information regarding their costs and effectiveness in your answer.

The department should consider alternative forms of access, in particular telephone (voice and TTY) and cellphone text message.During the transition of web-based services to full compliance, all services, discounts, and coupons should be provided through the alternative means at no additional charge to the customer. Availability of alternative services should be comparable to availability of online services (that is, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week). Customer service personnel should be easily reachable within a reasonable time, if the service cannot be automated. It may also prove the case that not all information is convertible to web-based formats in an effective manner. In such cases, alternative access should become a permanent service.