Accessibility Statistics for Management Proposals

So where do you get the information to convince management that they should include accessibility in their next web site update? At first I thought they would be easy to find, but I think the medical privacy issue makes it more challenging than first thought.

I started with the U.S Census Bureau. They give general statistics for the US population. It is self reported, and not broken down into disability types that affect web access, for example, the people reporting physical disabilities includes disabilities that don't affect web use, like wheel chair use is combined with severe arthritis. The overall number is impressive, 54 million Americans self-report themselves as disabled in 2000. That's a number that makes every marketing type sit up and think "market share". I also found another article that quoted

US Census Bureau stated that disabled persons in the US alone had an aggregate
income of $1 trillion in 2001, including $220 billion in discretionary income.

But where to find the numbers for Internet users. A lecture by Andrew Kirkpatrick led me to a Forrester Research project for Microsoft with lots of good statistics. Go to page 4 for the numbers. Microsoft also keeps a useful page listing Accessible Technology marketing research.

Good luck!

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