Proven business benefits of digital accessibility

Published in

The Startup

4 min readNov 14, 2019

Why designing for everyone is not only the right thing to do, but can also benefit the bottom line

Browsing a website for many of us is a piece of cake. However, this is not the case for over a billion users with reported disability. For example,

Someone who cannot hear may not be able to access audio unless it has captions.
Using certain font styles or text spacing may make it difficult to read the text for someone with dyslexia.
Someone with vision impairment cannot browse a website unless it is coded with accessibility in mind and can be read correctly by a screen reader (software that converts text to speech).

While websites and mobile are a convenience for many of us, for many others it makes things possible. Moreover, making the digital world accessible is not only the right thing to do, but it can also be an overall asset to your business.

1. Improve Usability

Accessibility can impact usability. When I first started learning about UX design, I did not realise that a website is not usable unless it is also accessible.

When we design for people at the extreme end of the disability spectrum, we usually end up benefiting many other users with less severe conditions, temporary limitations, illnesses, age or social factors.

For example, a higher colour contrast can help mobile users whether they are in the bright lights of Las Vegas or in the nights of Nevada Desert. A clean simple design can benefit all users, and not just some users with cognitive disabilities. Apple’s Siri was initially created for people with sight loss but is now commonly used by sighted people as well.

Stats: According to the Forrester Research Economic Impact Study commissioned by Microsoft, out of 319 companies, 252 agreed that inclusive software improved usability and customer experience (1).

2. Increase ROI (Return on Investment)

It makes financial sense to reach an additional 15–20% people.

There is of course cost associated when considering accessibility in your websites or apps; such as carrying out audits, training, or additional marketing. However, the benefits usually out-weigh these costs.

Stats: Model to calculate ROI can be found in the book, Cost-Justifying Usability (2). Example calculation results in a market increase of 8% and ROI of 2.4:1.

Interestingly, UK supermarket Tesco, found that making their online website and other digital products accessible drove in a yearly sales increase of £13 million (3). Moreover, according to the Click-Away Pound survey (4),

more than 4 million people in U.K. abandoned a retail website because of the barriers they found, taking their money elsewhere

3. Increase Search-Engine Ranking

Google’s index bot is a like a user with vision impairment and a billion friends. It relies on text to understand images and media content. When websites provide useful alternative text to images, audio, and videos, this makes the site easier to find, increase its ranking, and get recommended.

Stats: At NPR weekly broadcast, that has about 2.1 million listeners each week, providing transcripts increased the search traffic traffic by 6.86% (5).

4. Increase Branding

We are more likely like to buy from a brand that genuinely cares about people.

Stats: The 2019 Cone/Porter Novelli Purpose Study shows (6)

86% would purchase products and services from that company
81% would support company in their community
70% want to work for that company
64% want to invest in that company

5. Avoid Lawsuits and Complaints

Finally, most countries have laws protecting disabled people. This means it is very likely that your company needs to be compliant, especially if you are living in a developed country. More recently, there has been an explosion of lawsuits in the last year, from Rihanna’s beauty website to Dominos.

Stats: In the United States, the number of lawsuits increased from 814 to over 2250, according to the international legal firm Seyfarth Shaw (6).

Way Forward

While I have shared some objective benefits of accessibility, we should always consider accessibility regardless. Sometimes it may not immediately seem beneficial to consider people with disabilities in your products. But we will all benefit from a more universal design, especially as we get older. And we should not intentionally discriminate. Making your products accessible is to be at once, touched with light and bound by reason.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it and will help spread the word about accessibility or consider making your products more accessible. You can leave your comments here or connect with me on linkedin.