Accessibility as a growth lever
Businesses often frame accessibility as a cost center. In practice, the same changes that open access for blind and low-vision users—clear labeling, keyboard operability, readable contrast, structured content—also accelerate all users. When forms are understandable, errors are specific, focus is visible, and media has text alternatives, people move faster, abandon less, and contact support less. Accessibility becomes operational efficiency, not just legal hygiene.
Revenue: conversion wins you can measure
1) Checkout and form completion
The most expensive failures are at the bottom of the funnel: shipping, billing, and payment. Common barriers—missing labels, vague errors, keyboard traps, low-contrast instructions—create drop-off. When these are corrected, every customer benefits: autofill works reliably, errors are recoverable, and primary actions are always reachable from the keyboard. Expect gains in successful submits, not just for assistive tech users but also for hurried mobile shoppers, older users, and anyone multitasking.
2) Product discovery and filters
Well-structured headings, identifiable links, and operable filters reduce pogo-sticking and improve “findability.” For assistive tech users, labeled facets and predictable focus order are the difference between discovery and abandonment. For everyone else, they mean faster paths to “Add to Cart.”
3) Media & documents converted into sales assets
Captions keep viewers engaged in quiet/noisy environments. Transcripts make content skimmable and searchable. Accessible PDFs or HTML equivalents let policies and instructions drive action instead of support tickets. Each of these increases velocity through the funnel.
Cost: support and operating expense reduction
- Fewer “how do I…?” tickets: Clear labels, specific errors, and visible focus reduce confusion-driven chats and calls.
- Lower manual overrides: When customers can self-serve (booking, returns, refills), staff spend less time pushing transactions through.
- Fewer hotfixes: Component-level fixes prevent repeated one-off patches that accumulate technical debt.
Risk: legal exposure and brand damage
Inaccessible interfaces can deny equal access to services and invite legal scrutiny. Beyond potential monetary outcomes, brand trust and partner relationships are at stake. Treating accessibility as a preventive control—with repeatable processes and component coverage—reduces the odds of harmful experiences and the reputational costs that follow. It also provides a documented improvement plan if issues are raised.
SEO, performance, and analytics: the compounding effects
- SEO: Semantic headings, descriptive links, alt text for meaningful images, and structured content provide better signals to search engines.
- Performance: Accessible patterns reward clean markup, fewer “div-as-button” hacks, and reduced reflow—often yielding faster pages.
- Analytics quality: When navigation is logical and state changes are announced consistently, your event tracking is more accurate.
A simple ROI worksheet your CFO will respect
Start with conservative assumptions and your own baseline metrics. The goal is directional clarity, not precision to the penny.
- Traffic to key flow (monthly):
T - Current completion rate:
CR₀(e.g., 2.2%) - Average order value (or value per completion):
AOV - Post-accessibility completion rate:
CR₁(e.g., +0.2 to +0.7 percentage points from reduced friction)
Incremental revenue / month ≈ (T × (CR₁ − CR₀) × AOV)
Layer on support savings (tickets avoided × cost per ticket) and engineering savings (component fixes replacing repeated page-level hotfixes).
Component-first upgrades: the efficient way to invest
Accessibility work pays off when it scales. Rather than patching pages, invest in your design system and shared components:
- Buttons & links: real elements, visible focus, clear labels, discernible disabled state.
- Forms: labels, hints, error associations, focus management, mobile-friendly input types, sensible
autocomplete. - Navigation: skip links, keyboard-operable menus, predictable focus return, logical headings and landmarks.
- Media: captions, transcripts, audio description, keyboard-friendly players.
- Feedback: live regions for status (added to cart, saved, error) that don’t interrupt reading.
Fixing these in code once propagates benefits to every surface using the library: marketing site, account portal, store, app. It also standardizes QA.
Operating model: bake accessibility into your release cycle
- Definition of done: Keyboard-only path, visible focus, labeled controls, error announcements, and zoom at 200% without loss of content.
- Design tokens: Contrast-compliant color pairs, a single focus style used everywhere, spacing scales that preserve tap targets (≥44px).
- QA smoke tests: Quick checks in NVDA/JAWS/VoiceOver for shared components and the top revenue flows.
- Regression guardrails: Lint rules and unit tests for roles/names/states; visual regression for focus styles; CI checks for color token use.
- Analytics instrumentation: Track form error types, validation loops, and keyboard-only completions to quantify friction removal over time.
Messaging to stakeholders (copy you can reuse)
“We are standardizing accessible components in our design system. This lowers abandonment in checkout and signup, reduces support contacts, and mitigates legal risk. We’ll report monthly on completion rates, error reduction, and ticket volume as components roll out.”
Common objections—and practical answers
“We’ll do it later.”
Retrofits cost more. Fixing components now prevents a long tail of page-level bugs and missed revenue in the interim. Accessibility debt is conversion debt.
“Our audience is tech-savvy.”
Accessibility helps everyone: mobile users in glare, people with temporary impairments, older buyers, and power users who rely on keyboard speed.
“We installed an overlay.”
Add-ons cannot repair missing labels, broken focus order, or custom widgets built without semantics. Real fixes happen in design and code.
Quick wins you can deploy this sprint
- Restore a high-visibility focus ring across the site.
- Replace placeholder-only forms with persistent labels and specific error messages.
- Add skip to content and ensure headings outline the page logically.
- Ensure the primary CTA is a real
<button type="submit">with an accessible name (“Place order”). - Provide captions for recent videos and a transcript for long audio.
What to measure after launch
- Completion rate change on target flows (checkout, signup, booking).
- Error distribution before/after (e.g., “invalid phone” vs. “field not found”).
- Support contacts related to forms, payments, or navigation.
- Keyboard-only completions (proxy via focus patterns and events).
- Time-to-complete and drop-off steps in multi-step flows.
Why this matters legally and ethically
Equal access is a civil right. When inaccessible design blocks people from shopping, booking care, or managing accounts, the harm is concrete. Treating accessibility as part of quality—not an afterthought—protects users and the business. If issues arise, having a component-first program, metrics, and release notes demonstrates diligence and good faith while you remediate.
How The Brensilber Law Firm helps (briefly)
We help individuals document barrier-driven harm and pursue outcomes that lead to meaningful fixes. For organizations, we translate legal exposure into plain-language remediation priorities and evidence-based processes. If you’ve encountered barriers online—or need to align product, legal, and leadership around an accessibility plan—contact us or explore our Resource Hub.