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NCDAE: The National Center on Disability and Access to Education

GOALS
Cost Analysis Survey

GOALS is engaged in the beginnings of a cost study on web accessibility in higher education. We are interested in gaining the opinions of others on protocols that will be developed. We would appreciate your input in responding to the following three questions.


Measures of the cost of accessibility must be based on a reasonable standard of accessibility. Section 508 is a standard used by many institutions. However, it is dated, incomplete, and may be updated before this study is concluded. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 represent the most up-to-date and comprehensive accessibility guidelines, but we felt that Level A might not be inclusive enough and Level AA was possibly a bit too comprehensive for this study. We have decided that our standard for accessibility will be WCAG 2.0 Level A plus two AA Success Criteria: 1.4.3, Contrast (Minimum) and 2.4.7, Focus Visible.


We will be capturing how people gained web accessibility knowledge, experience, and skills. The following questions will be presented to study participants:

How did you reach your current level of web accessibility expertise (select all that apply)?

  • Learned web accessibility on my own from a book or other printed resources.
  • Learned web accessibility online or through other electronic resources.
  • Learned web accessibility on-the-job, perhaps with the help of colleagues at work.
  • Went to a training or series of trainings on web accessibility.
  • Took an established course (for credit) that included web accessibility in high school, college, or university.
  • I have had little or no exposure to web accessibility principles.