Recently, there has been a lot of buzz around web accessibility solutions. Still, many business owners are unaware of its significance and the impact of ignoring it in their organizations.
According to the World Health Organization, 16% of the world’s population experience a significant disability. Businesses in the UK lose around £2 billion every month by overlooking the needs of disabled people.
By offering accessibility services, you can adopt a more inclusive approach to customer services and business.
Accessibility solutions are crucial for any business to thrive. Implementing web accessibility standards can boost your revenue by opening your business to various opportunities for growth.
What is Web Accessibility?
Web accessibility solutions ensure that your digital properties and website can be easily accessed by people with disabilities, including those with temporary, permanent, situational, or conditional barriers. Its value is such that it can promote brand awareness and ensure customer loyalty.
Plus, it can help you differentiate your business from your competitors in multiple ways.
Not only do users with physical barriers benefit, but there are also additional non-disability benefits. Less mobility due to aging, environmental limitations such as poor internet connection/bandwidth, input modes for gadgets with small screens, and short-term disabilities like misplaced specs or broken bones.
Additionally, it plays a major role in keeping litigation at bay.
How Do Accessibility Solutions Boost Your Business?
Failure to implement web accessibility standards can hurt your brand, leave your company vulnerable to lawsuits or prevent several prospects from accessing your website. Here’s how digital accessibility can be beneficial for your business.
1. Mitigate the Risk of Legal Complications
As the internet has become an integral part of people’s everyday lives, it could be said that digital accessibility is a civil right for users with disabilities. However, there can be serious legal repercussions for companies that aren’t accessibility compliant.
So it is important to strive for at least the basic level of compliance to avoid potential litigation for discrimination.
Web accessibility lawsuits are trending up, with more than 4,000 cases filed in 2022 under The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Therefore, web accessibility should be prioritized per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to avoid potential risks of legal action.
2. Strengthen Your Visibility Through SEO
Accessibility and SEO go hand-in-hand. Digital accessibility services improve your visitors’ experience, enhancing the quality of your website’s SEO. By extension, your website can achieve a better ranking in search engine results and increase visibility.
The higher your visibility, the higher your reach will be. The more you reach your prospects, the more conversions you make.
By paying attention to accessibility, you’re ensuring an outstanding user experience. Simple and user-friendly interfaces make interaction and navigation with your website easier for people with disabilities. This ease of access helps in reducing the bounce rate significantly.
3. Build Your Brand Identity
Your website is a medium to show the world that your business is mindful and inclusive of its customers and their requirements. Partners and customers are attracted to businesses that encourage an ethical culture.
Lacking web accessibility increases the risk of litigation and builds a bad brand image.
On the other hand, ensuring web accessibility helps create a reputable brand that fosters inclusivity to serve different customer bases. You’ll have more customers with exceptional experiences with your brand.
Moreover, it is a simple yet effective way to spread awareness and strengthen your brand.
4. Optimize Overall Usability
Accessibility is linked with usability as it promotes a seamless user experience. At its core, accessibility improves efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. It greatly affects how people interact with your services and products.
The following are some examples.
- Adding alt text to objects and images helps visually impaired and blind people comprehend the visual content on your website.
- An interactive and user-friendly website design helps users with limited cognitive abilities navigate your website.
- An excellent color contrast for your website design helps visually impaired people interact better with your website content.
5. Augment Customer Satisfaction and Retention
Lack of inclusion by businesses causes difficulties for users with disabilities to access quality customer services. This is a perfect opportunity for you to gain a competitive edge.
Do you know that businesses not providing accessibility services leave as much as $6.9 billion annually to competitors who do?
Offering accessibility services will make your company an exception and provide great customer satisfaction to users with access needs. This kind of distinct customer satisfaction results in client lock-in and increases retention.
6. Increase Your Revenue
The 16% of the population living with disabilities form a large consumer base with immense potential for profitability. These people deserve and have a right to access services and products that enhance the quality of their lives.
This paves the way for an excellent business opportunity to widen the company’s market penetration.
Creating an accessible web space for your company comes at a price. But compared to the advantages of such adoption, it is a very small cost.
Companies that provide accessibility services can reach a wider consumer market with their services and products. And a wider reach correlates to greater revenue.
Key Takeaways
As we have pointed out, accessibility benefits a business in many aspects, ranging from basic compassion for people to legal obligation. So, in addition to understanding the skills and efforts needed to implement accessibility, it’s great to know the value it adds to the business.
With so much focus on web accessibility, you should consider making it an integral part of your website design and development.
Join the Accessibility Bandwagon with Hurix Digital
If you are a fresher in this world of access and inclusivity and would love to adopt it for your company, you are on the correct track to growth. Don’t worry; you don’t have to take the stress of building a team.
With a rich experience of over two decades, Hurix Digital can help you make your business more accessible and inclusive. The first step involves an in-depth analysis of your existing company website to identify the areas that require optimization per accessibility guidelines.
You can talk to our experts at Hurix to get started.
