Editorial
The Gist
- Legal protection. Improving website accessibility helps businesses avoid costly lawsuits and comply with ADA regulations.
- Revenue generation. Accessible websites enhance customer experience and engagement, leading to increased revenue opportunities.
- Customer loyalty. Ensuring accessibility fosters customer loyalty and protects your business reputation by catering to diverse audiences.
Business success is a series of tradeoffs. Whether it’s our time, budget, or resources, investing in one strategy, hire, product, or outcome, means we forego alternatives.
We obsess over the data, trust our gut, and make hard decisions. Sometimes, it’s a win, and sometimes, we cut our losses — hindsight really is 20/20.
But sometimes, a decision comes along that’s simply the right thing to do.
THAT, my friends, is improving website accessibility – it’s the right thing to do for your business, customers and revenue.
Overlooking accessibility, on the other hand, risks costly lawsuits, revenue loss, and customer churn.
I’ll prove it.
1. Foolproof Website Accessibility Plan: Don’t Get Sued
Avoiding legal trouble wins our tradeoff battle every time.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities. Title III requires reasonable access to places of public accommodation, which the Department of Justice (DOJ) clarified includes websites, apps and other digital experiences.
No business worth its salt would knowingly discriminate against customers. Yet, improving website accessibility is overlooked by far too many.
In fact, 2,281 website accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2023, excluding the high volume of potential lawsuits settled out of court. 82% of the Top 500 ecommerce companies have already been sued.
As litigation increases and digital becomes ubiquitous, businesses must preemptively improve their digital experiences to match Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), the agreed upon standard.
Don’t get sued – it’s right for your business.
Related Article: Empowering Accessibility: Discover's Story of Inclusivity in the Digital Age
2. Boost Revenue and Customer Experience with Website Accessibility
Your customers’ digital experience IS their customer experience. It captures and influences purchases, cements impressions, supports customer service, enables self-service and so much more. Across the customer journey, digital is the ultimate engagement opportunity for increasingly more profitable customer interactions.
Marketing teams feel this pressure — spending on average $1.6M on website team members and technology annually.
SO — imagine the budget waste to invest heavily in this critical sales channel only to later learn that a customer:
- With visual impairments, couldn’t successfully browse your products.
- Lounging on a sunny beach, couldn’t read your contact information.
- Sitting on a crowded bus, couldn’t hear your webinar.
- With a broken arm, couldn’t complete your checkout.
If your website isn’t accessible, customers can’t use it effectively, and it costs you revenue.
In fact, consumer companies lose $6.9 billion annually because of inaccessible websites, and 51% of consumers are willing to pay more to companies committed to digital accessibility.
Accessibility isn’t a “nice-to-have” – it’s a revenue-generating motion, and as such, the right choice for your bottom line.
3. Enhance Design, Cater to Diverse Audiences and Boost Loyalty
“This doesn’t apply to my business; my target audience isn’t disabled.”
This is an egregious, albeit common, accessibility misconception. TL;DR — accessibility benefits ALL audiences.
First, better website accessibility equals better website design. It’s that simple.
Second, every audience is diverse, and both permanent and temporary limitations impact whether customers can successfully use your digital properties without frustration.
Consider:
- One in four adults in the United States lives with some type of disability.
- As people age, they experience new challenges, like vision issues or cognitive decline.
- People face temporary limitations, like breaking an arm or trying to browse the web with poor Wi-Fi.
An inaccessible experience risks customer loyalty and negatively impacts your business reputation.
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In fact, our technology partner Acquia surveyed users who self-reported experiencing disabilities and found that:
- 89% had encountered accessibility issues that make it hard to interact.
- 51% then sought out accessible alternatives (i.e. your competitors).
- 31% said they tell their family and friends about their frustrating experience.
Ultimately, it’s your organization’s responsibility to constantly evaluate your website against accessibility standards to identify and resolve issues and remove as many barriers-to-use as possible.
This isn’t a one-and-done exercise. There’s always an opportunity to incrementally improve your website’s usability and accessibility — it’s the right thing to do.
Related Article: Web Accessibility and What Brands Need to Know: Q&A With Steve Barnes
Improving Website Accessibility Is an Easy Choice
This isn’t rocket science. By investing in your website accessibility, you’ll stay out of court, put more money in your pocket and deepen your customer relationships. It’s an easy choice with clearly defined guidelines to achieve success.
Do the right thing — ensure users with ALL abilities can effectively enjoy your digital experience.
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