Today’s competitive and consumer-driven market has made it mandatory for businesses to create a powerful digital identity. Whether you’re running an e-commerce store or a brick and mortar business, you need to establish a strong online presence to attract and retain paying customers.
This, in turn, has made websites an important aspect of growing every business. From boosting brand awareness and authority to skyrocketing conversions and revenue - a well-designed website can be instrumental in helping your business flourish.
Today’s entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of investing in an awesome looking website that’s been optimized for search engines. However, there’s one crucial aspect that business owners and CEOs continue to overlook, i.e. website accessibility.
While your website needs to be appealing and valuable, it should also be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs still think that the onus of website accessibility lies with web developers and designers.
Why Web Accessibility Matters: The Legal Perspective
As an entrepreneur or CEO, you likely already know that there are federal laws in various countries that make it mandatory for businesses to ensure that consumers with disabilities can access and use their products/services.
For instance, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a civil rights law that requires all businesses with physical locations to make their products/services/premises accessible to people with disabilities.
While the ADA doesn’t specify how the law applies to an organization’s digital identity, including its website and mobile app, the U.S. Department of Justice has made it abundantly clear that these assets are an extension of a business’s physical premises and, therefore, must be accessible as well.
Otherwise, your business could be sued for not complying with the ADA. This, in turn, would mean hefty legal expenses and penalties. Not to mention the damage such lawsuits can do to your brand reputation. All your brand-building efforts could go for a toss with one disgruntled customer who couldn’t make a purchase on your website despite using a screen reader.
In recent years, many renowned brands, including Domino’s Pizza, Netflix, and Winn-Dixie, have received web accessibility lawsuits because their websites/mobile apps weren’t ADA compliant. And the court rulings in all these cases have repeatedly emphasized the need for building accessibility inclusive websites and apps.
This is even more crucial considering that the growing number of ADA Title III lawsuits that are filed in federal courts each year. Unfortunately, most small and mid-sized businesses won’t have the resources to deal with the financial burden of recovering from such lawsuits. It is, therefore, high time business owners and CEOs prioritize web accessibility and create inclusive digital assets.
It is, however, important to understand that web accessibility isn’t just a legal obligation. An inaccessible website has a wide array of other long-term repercussions for modern businesses. Let’s dig deeper.
How Web Accessibility Affects Businesses
Here’s the thing - more than 1 billion people in this world struggle with some form of sensory, cognitive, or motor disabilities. That’s an astounding 15% of the global population. Considering the omnipresent nature of the internet, people with disabilities are also going to want to use websites, mobile applications, and other online tools.
Also, contrary to the widespread belief, many people with disabilities are employed and have tremendous spending power. In fact, U.S. adults with disabilities earn a cumulative disposable income of $490 billion. Moreover, they possess a buying power of roughly $21 billion, which is more than that of the African-American and Hispanic market segments in the U.S.
It’s also worth mentioning here that people with disabilities will have a natural affinity towards online shopping because of its convenience. If you’re running an online store, it’s likely that your target demographic already includes such consumers. But 71% of consumers with disabilities will abandon a website if they find it difficult to use.
Thus, if your website isn’t accessibility inclusive, you’ll end up alienating a crucial market segment with immense buying power. Needless to say, this is going to take a toll on your conversion rates and revenue. Also, it’ll damage your brand reputation, particularly in the disabled community.
On the other hand, prioritizing website accessibility will improve the overall customer experience of individuals with disabilities. This can go a long way to help you win their trust and loyalty, considering that most businesses are yet to realize the importance of implementing web accessibility.
This, in turn, will bolster your brand image and help you attract more paying customers from the disabled community. Also, it’ll position your brand as one that values all its customers and help it evolve into an industry leader.
The Role of CEOs and Business Owners
Creating an accessibility inclusive website is more than just executing a few changes in your website’s source code. Instead, it calls for a cultural shift in the way modern businesses perceive consumers with disabilities.
CEOs and business owners must integrate accessibility into every aspect of their business’s online presence. From your website and mobile app to social media posts and newsletter - make sure every digital asset provides equal access to people with disabilities.
Even if you don’t have the resources to recruit a full-time developer to maintain web accessibility, you can use modern AI-powered accessibility platforms to automate the process. For instance, accessiBe is a leading fully automated web accessibility solution that can be installed without redesigning or recoding a website which recently won an award on ProductHunt.
The use of such automated solutions is going to help modern business owners and CEOs bake web accessibility into the core of their online presence. Ultimately, this will transform the internet into a more inclusive space and create a win-win situation for both entrepreneurs and consumers.
What steps is your business taking to ensure web accessibility? Share your suggestions in the comments section below.