I think the real benefit that can come from a discussion like this is simply 
to make sure that museum professionals are aware that accessibility is a 
concern (and necessity!) and that, when choosing a vendor to create web 
sites (or when taking it on themselves), they make sure that the vendor or 
staff member is conscious of accessibility issues on the web and has plans 
to deal with it from the ground up.

Frankly, for a lot of museum professionals web design is unfamiliar 
country--there be dragons here!  Coding web pages seems very far removed 
from other tasks involved with the day-to-day maintenance of an actual 
museum and its collection.  Folks often feel lucky to get *any* kind of web 
presence up.  To ask somebody to be an HTML cop on top of everything else 
they do seems like asking a lot, but unfortunately there's no substitute for 
being aware that it's a concern.  I always urge people to familiarize 
themselves in broad terms with web design and development issues, and if 
there's interest, some time soon I hope to put together a white paper about 
web design issues sympathetically geared towards a frazzled museum audience.

All my best,

--Eric

Eric D. M. Johnson
Proprietor
The Village Factsmith Historical Research & Consulting, and
The Cybernetick Inkwell Web Design & Development
http://www.factsmith.com/
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