As the reader, you are likely accessing this article to understand and quantify the return-on-investment for digital accessibility, which you will present to your board or leadership to gain budget approval.So, I think it’s important to manage some expectations at the start.
This article is not intended to provide cold, hard numbers. Instead, I’m going to focus on the big picture today.
But why is that?
Because for most business teams, the ROI on digital accessibility is largely a preventative ROI, which is perhaps the most difficult ROI to prove.
In fact, it can never technically be proved. “Preventative” ROI is prevention, which implies you are trying to avoid an expense or extend the life of something. In our day-to-day lives, we spend money on “preventative ROI” all the time.
Perhaps we have our HVAC tuned annually to extend its life, we get our tires rotated to make sure they last longer, and we change the batteries on our smoke detector every year to prevent fire hazards. Alas, everything in this world is an assumption of risk based on statistics.
If you don’t believe me, look around!
I’m sure we’ve all heard about that friend who hasn’t touched their AC system in 10 years but runs as mighty as the day it was installed or someone who has never installed a smoke detector but never faced a fire.
The fact is, your organization may never face the repercussions that so many accessibility companies try to quantify.
However, for both B2C (Business-to-Consumer) and B2B (Business-to-Business) brands, some organizations require at least some business “why” or ROI to embark on any purchase.
So, in this article, I will explore how prioritizing accessibility can enhance brand reputation, expand market reach, improve customer loyalty, and ultimately drive revenue growth.
Quantifying Pain
Regardless of size or industry, organizations that we speak with have found that the pain of accessibility isn’t just the cost; it’s the time and energy your team will have to invest due to a 3rd party VPAT demand or legal letter.
Teams wish they could throw a bag of money at their website or software to fix the issue immediately, but accessibility can’t be solved like that.
First, there is time spent speaking with vendors, negotiating new contracts, and the joys of procurement. Maybe company policy requires an RFP, which can take months for many organizations.
Once you’ve finally found a vendor, you can finally kick off the assessment, which, when complete, means you must force your teams to prioritize an audit and remediation urgently.
You could attempt to forecast remediation, but neither your team nor the vendor can ever anticipate how much work will need to be done until the audit is completed, which is independent of the size of the website or application.
This ultimately disrupts their other priorities and roadmaps, causing stress and diverting time away from other critical tasks.
Addressing accessibility before a demand arises is ten times more time-efficient than doing so in response to a VPAT demand or lawsuit.Most attorneys would also tell you it is far more cost-effective than waiting for a demand letter or lawsuit and having no defense against the claims, leading to significantly higher (in our experience, 4-5X) settlement fees with plaintiffs if you are working with our team to help with litigation support efforts.
This is also why it is important to find a vendor who will support you with your long-term goals, but I’ll save that for another article.
If that isn’t enough to sell your team on accessibility, here are some examples of the ROI that it can provide.
Expanding Market Reach
One of the most direct benefits of digital accessibility is the expansion of your market. According to the World Health Organization, over 1 billion people worldwide have some form of disability.
By making your digital platforms accessible, you can tap into this underserved market. For B2C brands, this means reaching more potential customers, which directly translates to increased sales.
It has been estimated that the spending power of people with disabilities is upwards of 1.9 trillion dollars, which is a market larger than China. What would it mean for your brand to have access to that market?
One of the UK’s largest grocery retailers, Tesco, did a study on the return they saw from improving the site’s functionality for people with disabilities, and the results are a staggering 37,000% ROI by increasing the site’s sales by £13,000,000. It also improved the site’s display on mobile browsing devices with low connection speeds.
The stakes are even higher in the B2Bspace; companies often need to demonstrate their commitment to accessibility to secure contracts with partners or clients who prioritize inclusive practices.
Accessibility isn’t just about those with disabilities. It also benefits people in temporary situations, such as those recovering from injuries. By making your digital content more accessible, you cater to a broader audience, increasing traffic and engagement across all customer segments.
Full-stop, accessible design is universal design and will lead to a more seamless conversion experience for all users.
To those businesses looking to expand globally, there is ROI in building accessibility into your project roadmap now, since at the time this article is being published, the European Accessibility will require websites that sell people in Europe to be accessible or face fines upwards of £3,000,000.
Enhancing Brand Reputation
In both B2C and B2B sectors, brand reputation is a key driver of customer trust and loyalty. Just look at the types of brands that are corporate partners with a professional organization called Disability:IN. Companies that prioritize digital accessibility are seen as socially responsible and forward-thinking. This perception helps attract customers and enhances relationships with existing ones. But the opposite can also exist!
This was outlined in an interview between us and software development leader ArcTouch: “And then there’s the reputational harm of being associated with a high-profile accessibility lawsuit. Most disabled folks know that Domino’s Pizza was sued for lack of accessibility. They know that Target Corporation was sued due to lack of accessibility. That is reputational harm that is hard to undo.”
For B2B brands, being known as an accessibility leader can be a significant differentiator in a competitive market. Many businesses today, particularly larger enterprises and government agencies, have stringent accessibility requirements for suppliers and partners. Failing to meet these standards can result in lost opportunities.
I’d encourage B2B software leaders especially to review which companies are members of Disability:IN linked previously. There are a few questions you should ask yourself:
- What would it mean if a deal with one of these companies was lost or stalled because of inaccessibility?
- What if accessibility could be leveraged as a differentiator to win business with these vendors?
In 2025’s DEI report, those organizations will be required to document how they will assess accessibility in their procurement process, so now may be a “make or break” time for your organization.
Reduce Operational Costs
For e-commerce-only brands, walk-in channels are probably zero. However, operation costs are always a concern for brands with brick-and-mortar locations or call centers. The fact is that online orders are much cheaper, so ensuring customers are funneling through online channels is important.
So, let’s walk through an example. Let’s say your organization has four different ways to transact. Organizations typically operate through four primary transaction channels:
- Walk-In: A physical location where customers are assisted in person.
- Call-In: A staffed call center, which may be centralized or distributed.
- Mail-In: A facility that processes transactions received by mail.
- Click-In: A virtual platform where transactions are completed digitally via a website.
Here’s a comparison of the target and actual transaction percentages by channel for an organization handling 1 million payments per month:
| Channel Type | Target Transaction Percentage | Actual Transaction Percentage |
| Walk-In | 10% | 50% |
| Call-In | 20% | 25% |
| Mail-In | 30% | 20% |
| Click-In | 40% | 5% |
The cost of handling these transactions based on actual usage is as follows:
| Channel Type | Actual Transaction Percentage | Per-Unit Cost | Total Cost (1M transactions) |
| Walk-In | 50% | $10.00 | $5 Million |
| Call-In | 25% | $5.00 | $1.25 Million |
| Mail-In | 20% | $2.00 | $400,000 |
| Click-In | 5% | $0.50 | $25,000 |
Total monthly cost: $6,675,000
Now, consider an organization that enhances its website’s accessibility to increase the number of digital transactions by 10%, especially for customers with disabilities who might otherwise use walk-in, call-in, or mail-in services. Distributing this 10% increase evenly across the three other channels (3.33% each), the revised costs are:
| Channel Type | New Transaction Percentage | Per-Unit Cost | Total Cost (1M transactions) |
| Walk-In | 46.7% | $10.00 | $4.67 Million |
| Call-In | 21.7% | $5.00 | $1.085 Million |
| Mail-In | 16.7% | $2.00 | $334,000 |
| Click-In | 15% | $0.50 | $75,000 |
New total monthly cost: $6,164,000
Monthly savings: $511,000
Annual savings: $6,132,000
This savings alone could fund and provide a tremendous ROI for a digital accessibility program.
But of course, now people need to find the website, so search engine optimization is important. This segues into the next point.
Improving SEO and Website Performance
Digital accessibility and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) often go hand in hand. It’s tricky for some teams to conceptualize this, but ask yourself, “What is a screen reader”?
It’s a software program installed on a computer or built into iOS and Android mobile devices that can help people who are blind navigate and understand the information on a website or mobile application.
In other words, improving accessibility is improving a computer’s ability to interpret information on a website, which is the foundation of what Google is doing across the World Wide Web!
Said differently, many practices that improve website accessibility—such as providing alt text for images, using proper heading structures, and ensuring keyboard navigability—also improve search engine rankings. Higher rankings mean increased visibility, leading to more organic traffic and, ultimately, more conversions.
For B2B brands, where decision-makers often research extensively before making a purchase, being easily discoverable online is crucial. For B2C brands, the benefits are just as significant—better SEO means more customers finding your products or services, leading to higher sales.
Additionally, accessible websites tend to be faster and more user-friendly, as referenced in an earlier section of this article, where Tesco generated £13,000,000—or over $17 million U.S. dollars—from accessibility.This can reduce bounce rates and increase time spent on the site.
These factors not only enhance user experience but also contribute to higher conversion rates, providing a tangible ROI.
Reducing Legal Risks
Another critical aspect of digital accessibility is compliance with legal standards such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the United States or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) globally. Non-compliance can lead to costly web accessibility lawsuits, damage to brand reputation, and loss of customers.
Investing in digital accessibility from the start is far more cost-effective than retrofitting your digital properties after a legal challenge.In most cases, working with a vendor who has documented live-user testing will reduce legal costs significantly.
Dispelling the IBM Rumor of Shifting Left
We’ve all heard the infamous “IBM Accessibility Study”. The stats ran rampant years ago across the accessibility industry. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it was believed that IBM performed a study claiming that missing an accessibility issue in development costs organizations $10,000 per bug.
The fact is that simply is not the case.
This IBM study (which cannot be found to have been officially published by IBM) never directly addressed accessibility. Instead, it focused on software development bugs as a whole. Indeed, we can all agree that development bugs like the CrowdStrike “Kernal Panic,” which resulted in the world’s largest tech outage, are in a very different bug league than accessibility errors.
Still on the fence about it? Let’s walk through an example: During an accessibility audit, our manual auditing team will find hundreds of accessibility issues, near thousands, for some large B2B software.
Let’s pick a reserved number of 100 accessibility violations on a B2C e-commerce brand. If we were to entertain this alleged IBM accessibility study as true, that would mean it would cost the imaginary B2C brand $1,000,000 to remediate their site?
Surely, legal teams would encourage brands to simply settle if this were the case.
The honest truth is that it should cost your team a small fraction of this to remediate accessibility issues on your website or mobile application!
Driving Innovation and Efficiency
Finally, prioritizing digital accessibility can drive innovation within your organization. Creating accessible products often leads to a better understanding of user experience (UX) design principles, resulting in products that are easier for everyone to use. This focus on UX can lead to more efficient workflows, reducing development time and costs in the long run.
For B2B brands, this can mean delivering more effective solutions to clients, enhancing customer satisfaction, and fostering long-term relationships.For B2C brands, improved UX can translate to higher customer satisfaction, lower support costs, and increased repeat business.
Regardless of the industry, accessibility can be a unique selling proposition (USP) and a way to gain market share over your competitors, especially in the B2B space in government procurement.
Conclusion
In summary, I want to recap everything we talked about. First and foremost, remember that accessibility is a preventative ROI, and every organization should manage expectations that accessibility done the right way WILL be an expense. However, that expense comes with a reward and the opportunity to:
- Avoid obstacles in your roadmap and prevent stress as a result of an urgent accessibility demand.
- Expand market reach to a group with 1.9 trillion dollars of income.
- Enhance Brand Reputation and avoid reputational risks.
- Reduce operational costs by improving digital transaction metrics.
- Improve SEO and Web Performance.
- Reduce Legal risks.
- Drive innovation and create unique selling propositions for your brand.
Finally, providing equitable access to users with disabilities is simply the right thing to do.
Are you ready to invest in accessibility or working on your budget for next year and want to include a digital accessibility roadmap? Reach out to our team for a no-cost estimate to ensure your website, web application, or mobile application is accessible to all!
