But the most commonly used federal Web pages will be ready, he said. If Webmasters can manage that, the accessibility problem will be largely solved, he said. Because agency Web pages change frequently as new information is added and old data is dropped, creating only accessible pages for the next eight months will go a long way toward eliminating noncompliance among the most com- monly used pages, he said. Questions about cost and compliance were weighed heavily at a recent meeting of the Federal Web Business Council, whose members calculated that there isn t enough money in the federal budget to create 100 percent compliance. Fixing deficiencies in Web pages may be the easy part of complying with the Section 508 standards.
Accessibility goes way beyond the Web.
All must be made accessible. No one knows an estimate of the cost, and it s not in the 2000 budget or in the one for 2001. But the law offers agencies a financial escape hatch. A survey by the Justice Department conveys the scope of the problem. Those affected most are people who are blind or have limited vision and those who have multiple disabilities that include limited manual dexterity, the agency reported.