Summary: The business case for accessibility outlines some of the tangible benefits for organizations as well as individual web designers.
- Accessibility should be a fundamental part of a website design. This can be offset for savings in actual development and maintenance time. Tapping into the increased profitability of this broader market reach where otherwise it would go untapped. Not taking accessibility into account can lead to expensive and often time consuming retrofit of a website.
- Increase your market share and broader market reach.
- An accessible website helps you to expand into markets where people with disabilities make up a large proportion of your visiting audience. Accessible websites also help people with older browsers and even those using new technologies such as mobile devices and other different platforms.
- Employers Forum on Disability carried out research that found just over 10 per cent of the population in the United Kingdom have some form of disability impairment. With at least one in four potential customers either having a disability, or being close to someone who has (source: Employers Forum on Disability).
- Here in the UK, we have an increasingly elderly community and this is potentially about 40 per cent of the overall population. This huge audience with accessibility needs will be a major target audience with a significant amount of spending power and influence being used particularly over the internet.
- Accessible websites also take advantage of being more clearly identifiable by search engines. This increases search engine ranking and positioning.