Compliance and Accessibility Resources

Why Accessibility Compliance Matters

If you have recently heard about website accessibility and are wondering what is it, you are in the right place.

Website accessibility has only one goal. To make the internet available to everyone, including people with disabilities.

The role of accessibility compliance is to ensure that websites meet the accessibility guidelines to be accessible to everyone.

Living in a digital world makes a website essential to the survival and growth of your business, which makes accessibility compliance critical to your business's success.

Some of the reasons for this are very clear, others are less obvious. Here are the top 4 reasons to embrace website accessibility.

1. You Are Your Reputation

Ask anyone whose credit card was compromised in the Target data breach if they will ever walk into Target again without thinking of the inconvenience of their Visa being unusable because it had been stolen or the hassle of the bank replacing their credit or debit cards. If they have forgotten, I'm betting it took a while.

Target proved, several times, that customers' digital safety is not their top priority. They allowed customers personal and financial data to be stolen and then a year later they paid a huge fine because their website was found not to be accessible to people with disabilities.

They may have low prices, but so does Walmart.

Target spent a fortune on fines, customer recovery, and reputation repair after each of those incidents. Luckily they can afford it. Can you afford to spend millions of dollars repairing your reputation after it becomes public knowledge that you don't value your customers when they aren't in your store?

Target also has the advantage of having experienced both their data breach and their accessibility finding when business social responsibilities was less prominent. Having either of those incidents happen today may have had a very different result.

2. You Are Losing Out On Sales

The attention span of a website visitor is very low. If you can't provide a solution to what they are looking for, they will just move on. If your website isn't accessible to 20% of your visitors, those with disabilities, they are shopping somewhere else.

Let's look at real sales stats.

• 100 people come to your website
• 25 will be interested in what you are selling
• 1 will buy

If you are using digital advertising to get those eyeballs on your website and paying, one average, $1 per visit, that 1 sale will cost you $100.

Now let's assume that your website is not accessible. Instead of getting 100 people to view your website to get that sale, you'll need to get 120 people to view it. Because 20 of those people who land on your won't be able to use it properly and will go somewhere else.

That's a needless 20% increase to your sales and marketing budget.

Scale that ad spend and it can cost you tens of thousands of dollars per year in wasted marketing and ad dollars.

From a budget standpoint, making your website accessible is a great way to reduce and optimize your marketing budget.

3. It's The Right Thing To Do

Image a life without the internet. Think of everything you need the internet for, on a daily basis, just to survive.

We're not talking about slow WiFi or ugly website colors, but no internet at all.

Banking, shopping, food ordering, delivery services, and entertainment are now predominantly online. Call any large company and as you wait on hold you will hear "for faster service, please visit our website". But what if you couldn't.

No internet is a reality for many people with disabilities. While they may have physical access to the internet, the majority of the websites on the internet are unavailable to them.

Imagine getting a 404 error, every single day.

That is what customers with accessibility needs see each time they come to an inaccessible website. That they don't matter. While that might not be the message you intend to send, it's the one that is being delivered.

4. It's The Law

Like with physical accessibility, certain protections have been put in place to help people with disabilities online.

Nearly every developed country has requirements and guidelines for website and app development to make technology available to people with disabilities.

A global group of technology advisors have worked to develop standards and guidelines to make the internet accessible to everyone. As technology advances, the internet will become the tool it was intended to be, and accessible to all.

More Accessibility & Compliance Resources

The Basics of Accessibility

The basics of accessibility. What it is, who it's for, the rules of the web, and how it helps people with disabilities.

Compliance By Country

Accessibility guidelines and compliance may vary by country. Get the latest information for your country.

Protecting Your Business

Accessibility compliance is here to stay. Find out how you can best serve your customers and avoid fines and lawsuits.