Cheap ≠ Inaccessible
In answer to the question ' 1: Why are so many sites still inaccessible?' (in a recent interview for .Net magazine) Andy Budd said:
…It is the responsibility of the web development profession to educate clients about their legal responsibilities and build accessibility into their projects, whether specified or not. Unfortunately, due to the increased commoditization of web design, budgets continue to fall and accessibility is often one of the first areas to be affected.
Having not surveyed the accessibility of most commoditised websites I'm unable to comment how well buit they are.
However, as director of a company (Hobo) producing low cost, perhaps comoditised, websites I would like to disagree with the assumption that low budgets cause bad accessibility.
The trick is to find clients willing to understand the value of accessibility and recognise the amount of work that goes into creating accessible and usable websites. The trouble is that many businesses are completely unaware of the benefits that this work brings and instead continue to focus on the glossyness of the site.
As awareness of accessibility (and lets not forget usability) goes up, companies will find ways of acheiving good levels of accessibility within tight budgets. One way is to build sites within the framework of a CMS (content management system) that, for example, replaces dodgy tags and encourages the use of alt tags while discouraging the use of tables for layout etc.