If your business can’t afford an accessible website, you certainly can’t afford an inaccessible website.
That’s true for a simple reason: Digital accessibility requires an investment, but it’s an investment that pays off. If you actively ignore your customers with disabilities, you’re shutting out part of your audience — and you’ll end up paying much more for worse results.
1. Every business has customers with disabilities.
One of the most common arguments against digital accessibility is also one of the most unreasonable: “Our target audience doesn’t include people with disabilities.”
Over a billion people worldwide live with some form of disability; in the United States, about 25% of the adult population has a disability. If your products or services aren’t appropriate for a quarter of the population, you need to ask yourself why.
It’s worth noting that web accessibility isn’t just for people who are blind or Deaf. Those folks are certainly part of the discussion — and you owe them equivalent access to your services — but digital accessibility has a much wider scope.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is considered the international standards for accessibility and the de facto standards for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). By following WCAG, you can provide a better website for people with a diverse range of abilities and barriers.
That includes people with:
- Temporary disabilities caused by accidents, medications, or surgeries.
- Age-related impairments, such as memory issues or hearing loss.
- Situational disabilities, such as people who browse your website in a loud environment or in bright ambient light.
- People who use voice assistants (such as Apple’s Siri or Google Assistant) and other technologies to browse the web.
- People who are learning a second language.
Even if you think that you “don’t have users with disabilities,” you have customers who fall into at least one of those categories. Don’t ignore them!
Related: Situational Disabilities: Why Web Accessibility Impacts Everyone
2. Accessibility barriers create a worse experience for all users.
In basic terms, accessible design is a set of best practices for removing barriers that impact your customers. Following those best practices will immediately help you reach a wider audience.
Many of the accessibility requirements in WCAG impact all users. For example:
- If an order form has clear instructions and obvious controls, it’s easier to complete the checkout process. That means less confusion for customers and lower shopping cart abandonment rates.
- If text has an appropriate level of contrast with its background, it’s easier for all users to read. Even if someone has perfect vision, they’ll be more likely to read your content in full.
- Captioning your videos can support brand recall. Research also indicates that captions impact behavioral intent — a higher percentage of viewers will take the call-to-action.
- Providing descriptive subheadings can help people navigate your website and find the information they need.
Web content that works well with assistive technologies will generally work better with a keyboard and a mouse. You’re not losing anything by removing accessibility barriers — you’re simply creating a cleaner, more intuitive experience.
3. If your site isn't accessible, search engines can't crawl it.
One of the principles of accessibility is that content must be robust: It must be compatible with current and future technologies, including assistive technologies like screen readers.
To accomplish that goal, web authors must provide text alternatives for non-text content, use semantic HTML, and follow other practices that make content easier to “translate" to different types of tech.
And when content is robust, it’s also crawlable. Search engines can quickly understand the layout and purpose of each web page — and that can translate to higher search engine rankings for relevant keywords. The best practices of WCAG overlap heavily with the best practices of search engine optimization (SEO).
Related: If SEO Matters to Your Business, Accessibility Matters
4. Websites with accessibility issues cost more to maintain.
It’s true that building an accessible website requires some sort of investment. You’ll need to spend time thinking about a wider range of users, and you’ll need to test your content against WCAG.
But building a less accessible website costs much more. One study from the American Society of Engineering Management (PDF) found that fixing a usability issue after a product release can consume 100 times the development resources as compared to fixing the issue prior to release.
Of course, some accessibility issues are fairly easy to fix. In those cases, the actual cost difference isn’t quite that significant — unless the problem results in a web accessibility lawsuit — but even on simple websites, accessible design pays dividends.
Clean, simple code is easier to update. It’s easier to translate into different formats, and if you decide to migrate your business’s website to a different platform, you’ll encounter fewer issues.
Related: How Accessibility in the Web Development Process Saves Time
Digital accessibility is achievable, and there's a rulebook
Many business owners understand the benefits of an accessible website, but they don’t believe that they have the resources to create one.
Fortunately, that’s never the case. WCAG provides a simple, common-sense framework for creating accessible content. By establishing a goal and building with accessibility in mind, you can embrace inclusive design on any budget — and provide every customer with access to your business.
To learn more, get a free, confidential WCAG Level A/AA conformance report or contact the Bureau of Internet Accessibility to start building your digital compliance strategy.
