Empower All Users, Part Three: The Business Benefits of Inclusion

Diverse and inclusive teams. Enhanced brand reputation. A competitive edge. The fact is, accessible design is good for business.

Accessibility is not an afterthought 🤔

It is an unfortunate reality that some organizations use the argument of managing legal risk as the sole reason to care about accessibility. Most major markets such as healthcare, banking, and government services contain anti-discrimination legislation that affects public sites and services. And the cost for not implementing accessible design and code can be damaging.

Organizations that fail to incorporate accessibility face the risk of costly fines, like in the case of Target, who settled for six million dollars in direct damages after the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) brought a lawsuit against the corporation, stating that its website prevented people who use assistive technologies (such as screen readers) from using it.

This case was groundbreaking in that it brought accessibility to the forefront of organizational mindsets. It established the first precedent in the United States requiring commercial websites to be accessible under the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) and state laws.

Substantial costs aside, the negative impact of ignoring users with disabilities, and the ensuing bad publicity, can be…