The Business Case for Accessibility

Organizations are running out of reasons to overlook the need to design accessible websites. This reality is certainly hitting home in the United Kingdom. September 23, 2020, marked an important deadline for all public sector bodies in the United Kingdom to comply with updates to UK digital accessibility regulations. And another deadline is looming: public bodies must have mobile sites fully accessible by June 23, 2021. Accessibility is like data privacy: it’s not a nice to do, but an essential need for any organization operating in a digital-first world.

There are positive reasons to embrace accessibility, too. As the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) states, Businesses that integrate accessibility are more likely to be innovative, inclusive enterprises that reach more people with positive brand messaging that meets emerging global legal requirements. Having become a staple within business strategy, disability inclusion is increasingly becoming a key component of an organization’s digital strategy. According to the W3C, accessibility is good for business for many reasons, including: 

• For every ethical and socially responsible organization, it is simply the right thing to do
• In the UK alone the disability market, the so-called Purple Pound, is worth an estimated £249 billion every year
• Accessibility increases traffic. If there are fewer barriers to accessing content, it is likely that more people will use your website
• Many accessibility guidelines coincide with user experience and search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. Making a site accessible for people with disabilities will also make it easier to find and better to use for everyone
• And finally, for public sector websites and apps, it’s not a choice, it’s a legal requirement, as we state here.

More information on this can be found in the W3C’s article, The Business Case for Digital Accessibility.