The WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) published an article on how your business might benefit from incorporating accessibility.
Read the full article here: Financial Factors In Developing A Web Accessibility Business Case For Your Organization
This is a short summary of the article’s findings:

What kind of companies and organizations benefit from accessible websites?

  • Online-Shops, trying to sell things to more people
  • Non-profit organizations, in need of contributions, both financially and as volunteers
  • Companies that want to increase their market share by being found better by search engines (SEO)
  • Companies that want to improve their image and enhance the reputation of their brand as forward-thinking and innovative.
  • Sites from the education sector, i.e., universities and colleges that are financed by tuition fees and recruit students

Accessibility can actually help to reduce costs. This is how:

  • There is less need for support, when visitors actually find the information they need on your website.
  • The costs and effort for technical maintenance of the site are reduced
  • Accessible content is easier to translate. With clearly structured, fairly short sentences, translations can easily be automated.
  • Staff workload is reduced: Customers can carry out certain transactions online instead of in writing.

Which users can be gained with accessibility?

  • Older people (segment growing rapidly)
  • People who are temporarily impaired due to accident or illness
  • People who are permanently impaired due to accident or illness
  • People who are visiting your website while being in a distracting environment, e.g. very noisy, bright lights
  • People trying to work with your website on very small screens
  • People who need to cope with older hardware: many elderly people, for instance, use aged devices of their children
  • People who currently have a poor data connection

What are your gains as website owner?

  • A larger market share, as this still clearly sets you apart from the competition
  • More visitors, since search engine bots are among those who understand accessible content better.
  • Loyal customers who come again and again, because your website is working well for them
  • Lower follow-up costs (customer support, maintenance, administration)

Conclusion

Accessibility still sounds like we need to work really hard in order to make our content accessible for a handful of people. But if we go around with open eyes, in real life as well as on the internet, we will see that we all benefit from accessibility. The train that can be accessed without steps. Doors that open automatically. Signage that’s easily readable, and so on. The same goes for your website. Clear structure, good contrast, well-thought-out user guidance help everybody, not only people using screen readers.

If we can make the case that all of this actually gives you a financial benefit, why wouldn’t you make sure your website is accessible?