RE: ON-LINE POLL

["Jacobs, Steve I" <sj131264@exchange.DAYTONOH.NCR.com>]

I am willing to bet if we all joined together and pointed out the business
benefits of accessible web page design more business people would want to
design their pages in an accessible manner.  

For example, listed at the bottom of this e-mail message a few good business
reasons (and trends) to use height, width and alt tags in a web page. Keep
in mind that Alt tags enable graphics off browsing and height and width tags
enable a web page to be rendered into something readable more quickly.

Thoughts?

Steve

--------------------------------------------
Steve Jacobs, President
IDEAL at NCR
NCR Corporation
1529 Brown Street  EMD-5
Dayton, Ohio 45479

Phone:  (937) 445-6396 
Fax:    (937) 445-2468 
TTY:    (800) 855-2880 
E-mail: steve.jacobs@ncr.com
URL:    http://www.ncr.com

IDEAL at NCR is a non-profit NCR Business Resource Group (BRG) whose mission
is to support NCR employees with disabilities and the development of IT
products and services which are accessible and usable by persons with
disabilities. 

Note: The comments made and views expressed in this e-mail message reflect
only those of the author, and/or IDEAL at NCR, and do not represent the
views of NCR Corporation.

------------
Twenty to thirty percent of users surf with graphics off;
http://www.massey.ac.nz/~DViehlan/754week12.html
To speed up Web access, 20-30 percent of users surf with graphics turned
off. The browser downloads the text, but not the graphic images unless
specifically requested. This means information embedded in graphics is lost.
The ALT= tag overcomes this problem by telling the visitor what the image is
(e.g., Company Logo, wolf howling) or represents (e.g., search, navigation
bar). With this information the "no graphics" visitor can use your site
without frustration. Or provide a set of text-only pages for alternative
access. 

One third of online shoppers waiting for web pages to download will
"bailout" after only eight seconds. 
http://www.emarketer.com/estats/070599_8sec.html
5 July 1999: e-Tailers beware: one third of online shoppers waiting for web
pages to down-load will "bailout" after only eight seconds. This could cost
web merchants as much as $4.35 billion in lost e-commerce sales this year,
according to a newly released study by Zona Research. 

An estimated 2.5 billion hours were wasted online last year as people waited
for pages to download.
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/?f=VS&art_id=905355331&rel=true

Unacceptable download times could result in as much as $4.35 billion in
United States e-commerce sales being at risk each year.
http://www.internetnews.com/wd-news/article/0,1087,10_148261,00.html

Internet Performance Slowing Down
http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905355353&rel=true
A new study finds that despite overall improvements in performance, the
Internet may not be able to sustain performance-based applications in the
next century. Roundtrip delays have grown from 240 milliseconds to 370
milliseconds since 1995, largely as a result of the number of extra routers
now needed for information to reach it's destination. 

Slow modems still dominate the Internet scene.
http://cyberatlas.internet.com/big_picture/hardware/article/0,1323,5921_2771
91,00.html 
Bandwidth in the US [and the World.]
Fifty-three percent of Internet users in the US [72.9 million] connect at a
speed of 33.6 Kbps or less.  This represents 39 million users.
Extrapolating this figure to Internet users worldwide in 1999 [171 million]
this number increases to 91.5 million users.

The Eight-Second Rule
http://www.emarketer.com/estats/070599_8sec.html
   5 July 1999: e-Tailers beware: one third of online shoppers waiting for
web pages to down-load will "bailout" after only eight seconds. This could
cost web merchants as much as $4.35 billion in lost e-commerce sales this
year, according to a newly released study by Zona Research.

Zona's study, entitled, "The Need for Speed," summarizes critical web user
preferences and tabulates the economic impact of "bailout rates."

Online shoppers with 14.4kb modems who are unable to load web pages within
eight seconds represent potential lost revenue amounting to over $73 million
per month in e-commerce sales. An additional $58 million each month in EC
sales will be lost due to web page loading failures.

The report states that increased web traffic and the desire to place more
visually appealing content on merchant web pages are slowing load times.

Additional findings from the Zona report:

Currently there are 44.1 million US online shoppers with an additional 37.5
million planning to come online within a year

$3 million is at risk monthly in the securities trading industry due to
unacceptable download times

Over $2.8 million is at risk monthly in the travel and tourism industry
because of unacceptable download times
eMarketer notes that the underlying bandwidth problem in the US will be
solved incrementally, not monumentally. In the meantime, e-tailers would be
wise to make their sites as "speedy" as possible.