The compounding value of investing in digital accessibility and usability

Definitions: accessibility, usability and assistive technology  

Before diving into the value of accessibility and usability, it is important to clarify some key terms.  

• Accessibility: refers to access. When something online is accessible, people with disabilities can equally perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with it.
• Usability: is about designing digital experiences that are usable. In other words, intuitive, easy to use, efficient, and enjoyable.
• Assistive technology: Similar to keyboards and mouses, assistive technology increases, maintains, and/or improves the functional capabilities of a device such as a cellphone or laptop. They enable people to use their devices and in turn participate in the digital world. Assistive technology types include products like screen readers, screen magnifiers, and alternative navigation.

Learn more about assistive technologies in Fable’s Assistive Technology Glossary.  

Accessible and usable products benefit everyone 

When your product or website is accessible and usable for a person who has a disability, it is intuitive, easy to use and enjoyable for someone who does not. 

The opposite is also true. Inaccessible experiences are most often confusing, hard to use and frustrating for everyone, including those without disabilities. 

In her paper “Accessibility first: rethinking the way we approach website design and development”, Carie Fisher, the founder of A11yTalks (Accessibility Talks), highlights that in order to make your products accessible and usable for the greatest number of people, you should test your product with the top 25% users who will have the most challenges using your website or product. You will then cover the needs of users who have less difficulties using your service (~74% of the population). Fisher calls this the “trickledown effect for accessibility”.  

Consider features like dark mode, voice to text, autocomplete, Siri, pinch to zoom, and voice assistants. These all started as accessibility features made for those with disabilities. Now, these are products must haves loved by all. Captions were initially created for those who are deaf and hard of hearing. Now, 85% of Netflix users (196,350,000 people) use captions regularly. 

As Jutta Treviranus, Director and Professor of Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, said “when you design for the margins, you get the middle for free.”    

People without disabilities often use accessibility features when they are experiencing temporary or situational disabilities.  

Sam Proulx, Fable’s Accessibility Evangelist, explains:  

“You depend on the automatic door opener at the grocery store because your arms are full, and you can’t push the door open right now. You depend on the hands-free mode because you’re driving, and you can’t look at or touch your phone. You may be getting a little older and it’s hard to see your phone screen, so you use pinch to zoom.  

When we think about building accessible and usable products, we’re thinking about products that will work for every situation that we find ourselves in now. But also, products that will work for both our current and future selves.” 

Shift from compliance to usability to increase reach 

Products that are WCAG compliant are not necessarily usable for people with disabilities.  

Minimum legal compliance won’t get you the benefits of tapping into this growing audience. Without usability, you’re putting in all the work without the benefit to both people with disabilities and your bottom line.  

In 2019, Nielsen Norman Group completed a study of usability testing, focus groups, and contextual inquires with individuals over 65 to determine how seniors use technology and to offer recommendations on how digital products can be improved to meet their needs. 

They noted that while this age group has the highest household wealth of any group according to The US Census Bureau “digital products often fail this growing and wealthy demographic.” 

The second reason stated for why using online services and products is challenging for seniors was: 

“Inflexible and unforgiving interfaces… as interfaces in websites and apps are often inflexible and unforgiving of errors… Older users make more mistakes than younger users do…The design choices that irritate younger users create substantial barriers to access for older ones.” 

When your products are usable to people with disabilities, you can additionally reach, sell to, and stand out amongst your competitors to a demographic with the most to spend. What leader would say no to investing efforts into doing that? 

In 2023, usability is a competitive advantage.

Tap into the world’s largest unaddressed market segment 

People with disabilities have a spending power of $490 billion in disposable income in the US. In the UK, 4.3 million disabled online shoppers click away from inaccessible websites and have a combined spending power of £16 billion (average per head) and £274 billion (household). 

The disabled population is further increasing for a multitude of reasons. People are living longer and there has been a global rise in noncommunicable diseases (such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, cancer, and cardiovascular conditions). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.2 million more people identified as having a disability than in 2020. 1 in 13 Americans further have Long COVID symptoms (which was deemed a disability by the ADA in 2021). 

Our world’s biggest generations (boomers and millennials) are currently aging. More of our population will require many of the same assistive technologies and usability considerations to use digital products as people with disabilities do today.   

When you picture your end user, do you picture someone who uses assistive technology when navigating websites? Someone who is aging with a bit of memory loss and slower movements taking longer to interact with your website’s layout? If not, you are actively limiting your reach into a potential market of billions of people globally. 

This is why people with disabilities are the world’s largest unaddressed and growing market segment. 

Gain brand loyalty & market share 

When you find digital products or services that feel intuitive and easy to use for you, you come back to that product. You’ll recommend it to your friends, family, and colleagues. If you have a bad experience navigating a digital product or service, you will move on to a competitor.  

This is also true for people with disabilities. Assistive technology users and those with disabilities show brand loyalty towards companies that have accessible and usable experiences. They will choose your competitor who has a more usable and accessible experience. 

The Business Disability Forum (BDF) completed a study titled “What disabled consumers buy and why” in 2021 that reported 43% of disabled consumers abandon an online or in-person shopping task early due to “a paucity of information on design and how it might relate to accessibility.” 65% of disabled consumers further felt their purchasing choices were limited on a daily basis.

When your product is usable and accessible for people with disabilities this is a brand differentiator that will quickly allow you to gain a significant market share over your competitors. 

Drive operational efficiency

It’s not uncommon for organizations to invest in accessibility because they must, due to customer complaints or legal action.  

Waiting to test accessibility only at the quality assurance stage is too late. Minor accessibility issues that could have been fixed with a single line of code may now have grown to be complex bugs.  

When you include people with disabilities early and throughout the design and development cycles, teams can solve problems as they arise. Allowing you to save time, effort, and money in the long run. 

This is why Fable Engage works within our customers’ sprint cycles and customer’s accessibility testing requests are completed within two days. As design thinking teaches us, testing with users often and early in the product development cycle is how you create experiences your ideal customer will love and keep coming back to.  

Think back to the “trickledown effect of accessibility.” Testing early and often is made more effective and efficient with ongoing product testing and research with people with disabilities. 

Proactive approach to product development   

When you focus on creating usable experiences over accessibility auditing or only using automated accessibility solutions your product development will become more efficient. 

When you complete an accessibility audit, you usually get a list of updates that need to be made to your product to make it technically accessible or WCAG compliant. If you are operating on a 2-week sprint cycle or consistently updating your product or service, this list is often made redundant really quickly.  

That list is also not prioritized. It is unclear which updates or errors will really improve the experiences of people with disabilities and what will not. So, you could spend months focused on updates that have no real impact. 

Your product team could then be replicating the very thing that is making your product unusable without ever knowing.  

If you regularly test your product or website with people with disabilities, you can determine what updates or features to prioritize as you’ll see what the biggest usability roadblocks are. Fable’s team of digital accessibility experts will additionally guide you in how to address those roadblocks in your existing product development cycles.  

This will allow your design and development teams to move faster and create more impact, which can yield huge returns. IBM was able to see as much as a 75% reduction in design and development time with their design thinking approach that improved team efficiency. This resulted in a calculated ROI of more than 300%. 

A human-centered approach to product development that includes usability testing with people with disabilities will not only allow you to sell more audiences but save money and time in your development cycle.