The compounding value of investing in digital accessibility and usability
How product testing with people with disabilities will grow your business
Most of us know that accessibility is something we should care about or implement into our work somehow. Nobody would argue against equal access to digital products and services for people with disabilities.
What is often not widely discussed or clearly articulated is the strong business case for engaging with people with disabilities in the early stages of designing and developing new products. So, it can be challenging to understand why accessibility is important for you to invest in right now. Particularly in the current economic climate.
Investing in accessibility and creating usable experiences for people with disabilities in 2023 will yield returns this year, and well into the future.
- Accessible and usable products benefit everyone
- Shift beyond compliance to expand your reach
- Tap into the world’s largest unaddressed market segment
- Grow your customer base
- Gain brand loyalty & market share
- Accessibility as a marketing differentiator
- Drive operational efficiency
- Proactive approach to product development
- Get your 2023 competitive advantage
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.
Grow your customer base
When people are thinking about whether to invest in accessibility, we often hear them ask:
“How many people with disabilities will actually use my product if it is accessible?”
Well, getting an accurate answer to this question is challenging as this question misses an important piece of the story.
People with disabilities will not use your product or service if it is not accessible or usable for them. Think of it like the chicken and the egg – which comes first?
Even if you could know how many people with disabilities are currently using your product or website, that number would not be indicative of how many people with disabilities would join your customer base if you had accessible and usable experiences.
If your product or website is inaccessible or not usable for people with disabilities, you are missing out on a huge market segment. People with disabilities are not a small or isolated group. 1.3 billion people in the world have a disability, that’s 16% of our global population. In the US, 1 in 6 people have a disability.
Grow your customer base
When people are thinking about whether to invest in accessibility, we often hear them ask:
“How many people with disabilities will actually use my product if it is accessible?”
Well, getting an accurate answer to this question is challenging as this question misses an important piece of the story.
People with disabilities will not use your product or service if it is not accessible or usable for them. Think of it like the chicken and the egg – which comes first?
Even if you could know how many people with disabilities are currently using your product or website, that number would not be indicative of how many people with disabilities would join your customer base if you had accessible and usable experiences.
If your product or website is inaccessible or not usable for people with disabilities, you are missing out on a huge market segment. People with disabilities are not a small or isolated group. 1.3 billion people in the world have a disability, that’s 16% of our global population. In the US, 1 in 6 people have a disability.
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.
Accessibility as a marketing differentiator
In today’s world, buyers of both B2B and B2C products and services are becoming more value driven. Global Market Research and Public Opinion Specialist, IPSOS, surveyed consumers across 25 markets across the globe, seven in ten (70%) respondents said they tend to buy brands that reflect their personal values.
People today are more aware of social issues, including the discrimination against people with disabilities – both offline and online. Buyers today value inclusion and want to see those values reflected in the brands they buy from or partner with.
Technology companies have been tapping into this by highlighting their values in their marketing strategies. This is often referred to as sparking brand affinity.
Highlighting your accessibility strategy, features and progress in marketing assets has become an effective way to highlight your brand values.
Here are some recent examples from technology companies.