News from Northwest ADA Center – Idaho
The Business Case for Accessibility
In an ideal world, organizations would inherently practice accessibility because it is the right thing to do and because it is good for business. While organizations don’t explicitly go out of their way to create inaccessible content, it is oftentimes difficult to prioritize accessibility amongst constantly changing new technologies and development practices.
What most organizations don’t realize is that starting with accessibility in mind can unlock a huge, overlooked market share, reduce potential legal risk, lower operational costs, and boost brand value. These positive factors end up helping organizations control costs to the extent that the accessibility efforts can pay for themselves. And, if it’s really done right, accessibility can certainly become a competitive advantage, especially in the eCommerce space. Right now, the spending power of working age people with disabilities is huge. Roughly 35% of working adults report having at least one disability. That’s a market share of $490 billion.
70% of websites have some type of critical accessibility blocker for people who are blind. That means $6.9 billion dollars in sales were lost because a person who is blind was unable to register on the site or complete the purchase.
To lower operational costs of doing business, many are switching to more ways to do e-commerce. That means targeting 60% of their sales to digital sources. Of the sales that were lost due to accessibility issues, 90% of those reported the issue to customer service multiple times. Pushing more traffic to your call center is costing the business time and money.
Not being accessible leaves you vulnerable to lawsuits. These have increased because in the last two years, digital business has become more important to everybody. Legal fees alone are expensive and the required accessibility changes are on top of that.
We all wish we lived in an ideal world where accessibility was taught to all developers and treated the same priority as other functional requirements, like security. It’s time to for businesses to include accessibility as part of their core values. When businesses demand it as part of their web development – that will be the start of systemic change.
For more information about the ADA contact:
Dana Gover, MPA, and ACTCP Certification, ADA Training and Technical Assistance Coordinator
For more information about ADA Technical Assistance visit the NW ADA Center Idaho website: nwadacenter.org/idaho
Email:dananwadacenteridaho@gmail.com
Phone: Voice and Text 208-841-9422
Idaho Relay Service: 7