[nabentre] Website Accessibility For Contracted Salespersons And Franchisees

Sun Nov 29 20:16:58 UTC 2015

Excellent response!

-----Original Message-----
From: nabentre [mailto:nabentre-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Brandon
Keith Biggs via nabentre
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2015 10:40 PM
To: NAB Entrepreneurs Mailing List
Cc: Brandon Keith Biggs
Subject: Re: [nabentre] Website Accessibility For Contracted Salespersons
And Franchisees

Hello,
There are 2 common states for a worker:
employee and contractor.
Employees are hired by the company and are on payroll. They do not really
need to pay any tax above what is taken out of their paycheck. 
They have to follow employment law and can do pretty much anything for the
company.

Contractors are people that sign an agreement with a person or a company
(their client) to do a service. The contractor sends their client an invoice
saying the duties performed, cost and payment terms. The client then pays
that exact amount to the contractor. Come tax time, the contractor needs to
file their own tax return for the business. For sole props I think this is
on the W2.

Here are some examples:
Employee:
You get hired by Z and Company to be their secretary. You get payed $15 an
hour. You work 40 hours a week, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. This equals
out to 160 hours for the month. At the end of your pay period (it is
normally 2 weeks), you get a paycheck that is about $800 (1200 with about
$400 taken out for taxes).
This is pretty much all being an employee entails. There are often benefits
and sometimes employers will offer payed time off, but they are not
required. In California employers are required to give their employees 3
days of sick leave each year. Employees get payed over-time if they work
over 8 hours in a day.
There is a type of employee called exempt. These employees receive a salary
which is not based on their hours worked, but is a set pay they get each
month.

Contractor:
Z and Company asks you to program an IOS app for them. They give you their
specifications and you tell them you will do it for $10000. They say OK and
you both sign a contract saying what you will do and how much Z and company
will pay.
When you finish the IOS App you give it to Z and Company and send them an
invoice for $10000. Z and Company then sends you a check for $10000.
You deposit that $10000 check in the bank.
Now Z and Company is out of the picture. You don't ever need to work with
them again if you don't want. But every quarter (or every year, depends on
you) Uncle Sam says that you need to pay him tax. This tax is around $40%+
(depending on your income) so it would be $4000 of this $10000. You jump out
of your chair and shout "NO WAY!" and start wading through the U.S. Tax code
(Or get an accountant). You find out that you can subtract costs of
operation such as costs of computers, server expenses, office expense,
utilities, furniture, business cards, marketing costs, website costs and all
kinds of other costs. This reduces your $10000 to around $5000 which then
reduces your taxes to only around $2000. This is still a lot, but it is much
better than $4000!

Why would someone choose to be a contractor? Because they get to be their
own boss, they get to charge what they wish, they can higher their own
employees and it is scalable (meaning that if you have 10 employees and each
of them are working on a contract that is $10000 and you are paying them
$4000 for their work, you are getting $60000 in income that you can use to
pay your business expenses and you).

Hope this helps,

Brandon Keith Biggs <http://www.brandonkeithbiggs.com/>
On 11/29/2015 6:04 AM, Anita Ogletree via nabentre wrote:
> Good evening and I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
>
> It has been a while since I've commented or asked questions on this list.
> If there's anyone whois willing to answer this question it would be 
> most helpful.
>
> When you talk about being a contractor or doing contract work for 
> companies, what exactly does that mean. I am trying to research some 
> business ventures in hopes of starting a business and I came across 
> this email.
>
> Thank you in advance for your help.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 12:54 PM Kane Brolin via nabentre < 
> nabentre at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>
>> On 11/24/15, Lauren Merryfield via nabentre <nabentre at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>> I know what you mean about companies supposedly "upgrading" and 
>>> becoming inaccessible. I tried and tried to get Thirty-One Gifts to 
>>> make, and
>> keep,
>>> their website accessible.  ...  Their attitude seemed to be that 
>>> they
>> couldn't make
>>> changes for one person.
>> Lauren, this is truly maddening, especially when you deal with a 
>> company that has recently made changes that made their Website less 
>> accessible than before.  One person probably made the decision to 
>> change the site's look and feel, without consulting their user base; 
>> but they refuse to acknowledge the need for accessibility because 
>> supposedly only "one person" wants it that way.  I have faced this 
>> problem with some companies I've contracted for in the past.  I'm 
>> still unclear as to how enforceable Section 504 and Section 508 are 
>> when one is a disabled contractor, not an employee; I sense most of 
>> the contract-hiring firms out there think it's not necessary to meet 
>> any accessibility standard whatsoever, because they're contracting 
>> for my services and not hiring me as an in-house employee--therefore, 
>> no need for ADA compliance either.
>>
>> I think that there is hope, though.  Overall this accessibility 
>> standard will become more universally met--not because of us who are 
>> blind, but because there is increasing pressure on commercial firms 
>> to make their sites mobile-friendly.  Most people now access the Web 
>> using tablets or smartphones, not laptops or full-sized desktop 
>> computers.  So a lot of the Java, Adobe Flash, and other garbage that 
>> used to populate Webpages is disappearing, as phones and tablets 
>> aren't very good at picking up on these gimmicks.  It is commercial 
>> considerations that are driving this trend, because I am told that 
>> search engines are rating Websites a lot more highly if those sites 
>> are optimized for mobile access, all other factors being equal.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> -Kane
>>
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