How can you explain web accessibility to stakeholders unfamiliar with the concept?

“Imagine locking 15% of your customers out of your store.” That's the impact of neglecting web accessibility. But think beyond legal compliance and disability rights (though those are crucial): accessibility unlocks untapped potential. Consider the dyslexic lawyer who struggles to read dense text, the colorblind designer who misses crucial visual cues, or the aging boomer with dexterity limitations. By making your site usable for everyone, you tap into this vast, often overlooked market. User experience improves for everyone, not just those with disabilities. Consider the impatient user who prefers keyboard navigation or the multitasker who relies on screen readers. Accessibility isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing.

Raise your hand if you are left handed. In a crowd of ten people, probably one or two did. If you are one of them you already know the feeling when you need to buy a computer mouse or some scissors: you feel unconsidered. So, as a stakeholder selling scissors you can consider 10 to 20% of your customers a minority that don’t deserve your attention (I doubt it) or see them as a niche market for your business. But (and this is the most important aspect) if you are a left-handed yourself you know what it feels like being “unseen”. Not existing. You feel empathy towards them. That’s accessibility: it’s not about extending your market, it’s about making your product accessible to the invisible ones. It’s caring about other humans.

Gauge accessibility itself first. Have you ever walked up a ramp instead of a staircase to get into a building? Ever noticed plated signs with raised dots when using an ATM? Accessibility itself is about normalizing experience for those who are differently-abled, whether in our limbs, our senses, our minds, or otherwise. The same goes for the web. Our websites and apps should be accessible. Users should be able to experience your online presence intentionally and not find themselves blocked at any point of the journey. Like the ramps for entrance fronts or braille for labels, web accessibility requires engineering for assistive technology. The strongest business pressure may be legal. In the U.S. look to where Section508.gov & WCAG meet.

Imagine a hospital that lacks ramps and elevators, making it hard for patients with mobility issues to access certain areas. Then imagine patients who can't read the signs or announcements around the hospital. They may miss crucial information about appointments, treatments, or services, leading to further complications in their care. Around 20% of patients, let's say 200 out of every 1,000, are unable to reach vital services or appointments. Consider the costs running the hospital – from equipments to paying staff salaries. With 200 patients unable to access care, revenue takes a hit. Just as a hospital strives to provide comprehensive care to all patients, websites without accessibility miss the opportunity to serve everyone.

Web accessibility ensures that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. Specifically, it means that individuals can: Perceive: Understand content through various senses (e.g., screen readers for the visually impaired). Understand: Comprehend information presented on the web. Navigate: Move seamlessly within web interfaces. Interact: Engage with web elements effectively. Moreover, web accessibility benefits not only people with disabilities but also: Mobile users with small screens or different input modes. Elderly individuals with changing abilities. Those with temporary limitations (e.g., a broken arm). People in situational contexts (e.g., bright sunlight).

The best example of web accessibility is the feature of LinkedIn of Immersive Reading. Any web accessibility would enable the following benefits: 1. To extend Your TC by almost 15 to 20 % 2. Since it is accessible to a large audience, it helps to build your brand image 3. increase your reach naturally as it gets better with the SEO mechanism. Additionally, I would suggest conducting some real-time sessions with people benefiting from it to showcase the usability to stakeholders.

So what does web accessibility look like? Meet the users where they are at, what assistive technology (AT) they are using, what assistance they need. E.g. a user with visual impairment may use a screen reader, it would have to read through the web page, so provide ways these users could skip to the main content instead of reading through navigation on every page. Someone with cognitive impairments for example could do with your content being shorter or have context reminders so they can stay in tune. Don’t release your site or service only to hear from a user they have tried multiple ways, their AT, browser, smartphone, and they still can’t perform some function or find some information. Engage your users, talk to them, design for them.

This is the best way to explain what is web accesibility. You can present examples easily through a mobile or a laptop, and may be covering the eyes of the person.

Usually, numbers from statistics work well for businesses. For example, 27% use a dark theme, 6% use a text-to-speech setting, 27% increase the font size and 7% decrease it, etc. Investing in accessibility also improves the interface for ordinary people. Screen reader tips help make the interface easier to understand for ordinary people. When statistics and numbers don't work, the easiest way to convince is to show how real people with disabilities use the product. The easiest way is to start with UI testing and then build in real accessibility support. Selling UI testing that has clear benefits for all users is easier than selling accessibility for a limited number of users.

From experience, even in organizations legally required for their digital presence to be accessible, accessibility (a11y) was the first corner to be cut to meet a deadline. Don’t wait until someone can’t use your service. Worse yet don’t wait to find yourself faced with a legal situation. Whenever we had to cut a11y out and had to retrofit it, the effort was always orders of magnitude greater than the work we’d have put in up front. And worse yet the result was not as desirable. Tail end a11y costs more with high risk. You will save money, time, effort, improve your product, your brand, avoid legal issues, and increase user satisfaction by investing in web a11y up front.

It is not sufficient to have a tool tell you a component is accessible. Don’t get me wrong, reporting tools are great! Just as we have excellent engineering teams with just as excellent QA teams supporting them, if you’ve designed for web accessibility it needs to be tested. Meet your users where they are. In one volunteer project accessibility was not in scope for MVP. Right after launch, the lead shared with me a blind user could not find more information on our site no matter what she tried. I got straight to work, retrofitted accessibility without testing beyond the browser yet, and got tools’ green checks. Yet testing in her AT revealed there was still more work to do for feature parity! Inclusive design means inclusive testing.