Why Accessibility
The Law
You may have found your way here because of a "demand letter" from or on behalf of a disabled person claiming your website is not accessible. Do not ignore it . While we are not attorneys, the person who wrote the letter almost certainly is. We are accessibility experts, and we are a lot less expensive than lawsuits.
So, what does the law actually say? Of course, it depends on where you are. A Dynomapper blog from 2019 surveys laws around the world. By the time you read this, the information will be outdated, but one thing stands out: Laws vary far more by who they apply to than by what the standard is. Almost all agree that W3C's Web Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the gold standard.
The United States is nominally an exception to this. The Americans With Disabilities Act covers non-governmental websites (or all such websites with a nexus to a physical, customer serving, outlet – depending on which circuit court you are covered by). But the ADA does not call out a standard, demanding only that you provide disabled persons "full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations." Be that as it may, even in the US, WCAG is the de facto standard. Despite the many lawsuits being filed, conformance to WCAG can stop a lawsuit before it gets started.
The US federal government (and some government contractors) are covered by Section 508, which calls out WCAG 2.0 level AA as its standard.
Increased Sales
This is the often-overlooked piece.
Website owner concern over these potential customers lags far behind the law, as does interest among researches and commentators. We know, for example, that there are a
billion disabled persons worldwide, with 64 million in the US. Of these, 22 million are prime working age with a disposable income of $490 billion, similar to other significant market segments such as African Americans ($501 billion) and Hispanics ($582 billion). Discretionary income for working-age people with disabilities is about $21 billion, which is greater than that of the African-American and Hispanic market segments combined. We know that these users would
rather find an accessible website (your competitor's?) than struggle with an inaccessible one, and that they are
loyal to brands that cater to their needs. All this we know. But how much money are you actually
losing by being inaccessible, and is it more than what you would spend to remediate and maintain a site to accessibility standards? This is what you want to know.
A survey out of the UK called "The Click-Away Pound" says that disabled
internet users in the UK who "clicked away" (71% of them) had a combined spending power of £17.1 billion (US$27 billion) in 2019. According to
Nucleus Research, U.S. e-commerce retailers are
losing as much as $6.9 billion annually to their competitors with more accessible websites. While "spending power" will always be higher than money actually spent,
we cannot at the same time discount the fact that barriers to shopping sometimes mean a dollar is not spent that otherwise would have been.
I know what you're thinking: "But we don't have disabled users." Did you know that 8% of men are colorblind, and that color blindness can adversely affect a person's ability to read web content? Did you know that people with vision loss play sports and watch movies, that paraplegics climb mountains, and the deaf write symphonies? If you sell a product, people with disabilities are trying to buy it. If you have a website, people with disabilities are trying to use it.