economic assessment for improving eaccessibility services and products

Study on Economic Assessment for Improving eAccessibility Services and Products

Jose Angel Martinez UseroProject Coordinator

Meeting on e-accessibility studies, 16 April 2010

• Background

• Objective

• Mainstream ICT to be covered

• Consortium

• Study approach

• Outcomes

• Empirical evidences on costs and benefits

• Key aspects or impacts

• Parameters

• Causal Loop Diagram

• Business Case tool

• Estimation and extrapolation

• Recommendations

Index

Study on Economic Assessment for Improving eAccessibility Services and Product

• People with disabilities are still not fully enjoying its benefits and

opportunities provided by ICT

• MeAC studies shows that eAccessibility in Europe is still low

• Not a niche market, up to 70 million individuals:

• Market opportunity

• Increment of disable workers productivity

• Need of robust evidence on cost/benefits and on macro impact

Background


• To contribute to the improvement of the accessibility of mainstream ICT

by providing useful information on costs and benefits of eAccessibility,

including:

• Empirical evidence

• Analytically/theoretically elaborated tools and data

• Recommendations for improvement.

Objective (1/2)


The objective of this study is twofold:

• At micro-level of analysis:

• Target: Managers of firms and public sector organisations

• Objective: Provide evidence and a practical tool supporting investment decisions in eAccessibility

• At macro-level of analysis:

• Target: Policy makers

• Objective: Provide a view of the magnitude of potential benefits and costs for the economy and society as a whole

Objective (2/2)


Mainstream ICT to be covered


• Our primary focus will be on Web accessibility

• In Digital TV, ATMs and self-service terminals we may attempt:

• Identification of general issues

• Elaboration of a casual model of impacts in terms of

cost and benefits

• List of costs and benefits to be included in the

business case

• Provide recommendations

Consortium


Subcontractor:

The Blanck Group

Study approach


Empirical evidences on costs and benefits (1/3). Secondary sources already identified


• E.g. of articles, reports, books already identified sources of information in the web field

Empirical evidences on costs and benefits (2/3). Secondary sources already identified in the proposal: statistics and dataset for estimations


Empirical evidences on costs and benefits (3/3). Case studies


• Some potential examples already identified:

• Virtual position LTD

• HM Revenue & Customs

• The Tesco Case

• The British Museum

• La Caixa

• Businesslink.gov.uk

Key aspects or impacts (1/2)


• Benefits: users’ level. The potential benefits here are the following:

• Increase in Health utility (QALY)

• Increase in autonomy leading to reduced costs of assistance;

• Increase in employability;

• Increase in wages (reflecting productivity);

• Increase in access to welfare benefits;

• Increase in consumer welfare;

Key aspects or impacts (2/2)


• Benefits: organisational level:

• Improvement in social responsibility and image;

• Compliance with legislation and avoidance of lawsuits

• Increase in external audience (increased online sales)

• Increase in usage of internal ICT applications (employees’ productivity)

• More efficient recruitment process;

• Efficiency gains from online transactions

• Technical improvements (reduced site development and maintenance time; reduced server load)

• Costs (only organisational level).

• Broadly-defined costs of redesigning existing sites or applications

• Additional (if any) costs of building an accessible Web site/application from scratch compared to a non-accessible one

• Extra costs of technical maintenance

• Extra cost of Governance

Parameters


• Quantitative or qualitative measurement of key aspect or impacts is highly dependent on a set of parameters:

Causal Loop Diagram (1/2)


• Linking a cause to an effect and assigning to such relation a

value

• The CLD identifies:

• The causal links between the key aspects

• Unintended effects signalling the possible presence of a

counteracting loop

• Lag times between the cause and the effect

Causal Loop Diagram (2/2)


Increased web Accessibility

Increased internal use of

ICT

Various technical

improvements

increased usage and digital

capacities for disabled and

elderly

Design /re-design costs

1a

2.1

5.1

C

Costs

Causal links (cause at tails, effect ad heads of arrows) C Counteracting loop indicates a temporal lag=

Other costs

Governance costs

reduced revenues for ICT industry /

constraints on creativity

Main output Direct outcome Indirect outcomes Macro impacts Unintended effects

Image, compliance,

etc

Increased audience

+ online sales

+ efficiency

+ recruitment

+ productivity

==

=

=

Reduced costs=

=

2

3

4

5

6

1b

1c

4.1

5.1.1

1d

Various users outcomes adapted from Vienna

Study

employability

productivity

Others

2.2

2.4

=

=

=

Growth

Reduced costs of exclusion

Cohesion and system legitimacy

==

====

==

==

==

Factors shaping costs:• organisational size• sector• degree of implementation

1

3.2

3.1

3.3

Users level of analysis

2.3

Business Case tool (1/2)


• Tool for ex ante evaluation in support of the decision to invest in

Web accessibility

• It will consider:

• 4 different groups of metrics, each one containing several

sub-indicators

• Not only the monetary analysis of costs and benefits

• Our approach will be robust but flexible enough

Business Case tool (2/2)


Estimation and extrapolation


• COSTS

• Extra costs for redesign

• Extra costs for design from scratch

• Extra costs of technical maintenance

• Extra cost of Governance: (We may attempt)

• BENEFITS

• Social responsibility and image (Intangible, self assessment)

• Compliance with legislation (Intangible, self-assessment)

• External audience reach and sales (quantifiable / monetisable)

• Productivity (internal IT application) ( monetisable);

• Efficiency gains from servicing/interacting online with customers/suppliers (monetisable)

• More efficient recruitment process; (quantifiable, but difficult)

• Technical improvements (reduced site development and maintenance time; reduced server load) (quantifiable but difficult)

Recommendations (1/2)


• Legislative and non-legislative recommendations building on

0066 outcomes in the fields:

• Web

• Digital TV

• ATMs, vending machines, virtual kiosks & public

announcement systems (visual, audio)

• Technical recommendations

• Business model recommendations

• Economic recommendations



• Recommendations focusing on the same twelve countries of

0066:

• United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Denmark, Italy,

Germany, Hungary, Portugal, France, Netherlands and

Czech Republic

• Recommendations at European level.

Thanks for your attention

Jose Angel Martínez Usero

[email protected]

Join us!!!!

http://www.epractice.eu/community/eaccessibility

mailto:[email protected]



economic assessment for improving eaccessibility services and products

Technology