The Importance of Web Accessibility

So why should we bother with these considerations when they might, at first glance, feel like a constraint on creative look’n’feel, on budget and so on?

Well, firstly: It’s the law

To meet government accessibility requirements, digital services must:

• Meet level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) as a minimum.
• Work on the most commonly used assistive technologies - including screen magnifiers, screen readers and speech recognition tools.
• Include people with disabilities in user research.
• Have an accompanying accessibility page that explains how accessible the service is. The date you need to publish this depends on the date the service moves into public beta.

Secondly: It affects your users and extends your reach

• 1/5 of the population of the Earth has a disability and struggle to have access to the same services and products that people without disabilities have.
• One in seven people in the UK - about 8.5 million - suffer from some form of disability according to DRC.
• Two million people in the UK have a sight problem according to the Royal National Institute of the Blind.
• 8-10% of the male population has some sort of colour-blindness - for some reason it is more prevalent in men.
• Users with mobility disabilities, including repetitive stress injuries and arthritis, may not be able to use a mouse or trackpad but can access content through the keyboard by pressing the ‘tab’ or ‘arrow’ keys.

Thirdly: It’s good for business

Whether an organisation is commercial, educational, non-profit, or governmental, most require justification for dedicating resources such as money or effort in support of a specific organisational policy or goal. This is according to the Business case for Accessibility.

Improved SEO goes hand in hand with accessibility, and improved UX means your site will have lower bounce rates, higher numbers of conversions and less negative feedback – all of which matter to search engines when ranking a site.

Getting accessibility right can help:

Drive Innovation: Accessibility features in products and services often solve unanticipated problems.

Enhance Your Brand: Diversity and inclusion efforts, so important to business success, are accelerated with a clear, well-integrated accessibility commitment.

Extend Market Reach: The global market of people with disabilities is over 1 billion people with a spending power of more than $6 trillion. Accessibility often improves the online experience for all users.

Minimise Legal Risk: Many countries have laws requiring digital accessibility, and the issue is of increased legal concern.

“Many organisations are waking up to the fact that embracing accessibility leads to multiple benefits – reducing legal risks, strengthening brand presence, improving customer experience and colleague productivity.”
Paul Smyth, Head of Digital Accessibility, Barclays. (Source - Business case for Accessibility)