The Accessibility Business Case for IT
Accessibility goes beyond compliance.
- Laws requiring digital accessibility are changing and differ by location.
- You need to make sure your digital assets, products, and services (internal and external) are accessible to everyone, but getting buy-in is difficult.
- You may not know where your gaps in understanding
are because conventional thinking is driven by compliance and risk mitigation.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- The longer you put off accessibility, the more tech debt you accumulate and the more you risk losing access to new and existing markets. The longer you wait to adopt standards and best practices, the more interest you’ll accumulate on accessibility barriers and costs for remediation.
- Implementing accessibility feels counterintuitive to IT departments. IT always wants to optimize and move forward, but with accessibility you may stay at one level for what feels like an uncomfortably long period. Don’t worry; building consistency and shifting culture takes time.
- Accessibility goes beyond compliance, which should be an outcome, not the objective. With 1 billion people worldwide with some form of disability, nearly everyone likely has a connection to disability, whether it be in themselves, family, or colleagues. The market of people with disabilities has a spending power of more than $6 trillion (WAI, 2018).
Impact and Result
- Take away the overwhelm that many feel when they hear “accessibility” and make the steps for your organization approachable.
- Clearly communicate why accessibility is critical and how it supports the organization’s key objectives and initiatives.
- Understand your current state related to accessibility and identify areas for key initiatives to become part of the IT strategic roadmap.
The Accessibility Business Case for IT
Accessibility goes beyond compliance
Analyst Perspective
Avoid tech debt related to accessibility barriers
Accessibility is important for individuals, businesses, and society. Diverse populations need diverse access, and it’s essential to provide access and opportunity to everyone, including people with diverse abilities. In fact, access to information and communications technologies (ICT) is a basic human right according to the United Nations.
The benefits of ICT accessibility go beyond compliance. Many innovations that we use in everyday life, such as voice activation, began as accessibility initiatives and ended up creating a better lived experience for everyone. Accessibility can improve user experience and satisfaction, and it can enhance your brand, drive innovation, and extend your market reach (WAI, 2022).
Although your organization might be required by law to ensure accessibility, understanding your users’ needs and incorporating them into your processes early will determine success beyond just compliance.
Heather Leier-Murray
Senior Research Analyst, People and Leadership
Info-Tech Research Group
Executive Summary
| Your Challenge | Common Obstacles | Info-Tech’s Approach |
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Global IT and business leaders are challenged to make digital products and services accessible because inaccessibility comes with increasing risk to brand reputation, legal ramifications, and constrained market reach.
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Understanding where to start, where accessibility lives, and if or when you’re done can be overwhelmingly difficult.
Conventional approaches to accessibility often fail because users are expected to do the hard work. You have to be doing 80% of the hard work.1 |
Use Info-Tech’s research and resources to do what’s right for your organization. This framework takes away the overwhelm that many feel when they hear “accessibility” and makes the steps for your organization approachable.
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1. Harvard Business Review, 2021
Info-Tech Insight
The longer you put off accessibility, the more tech debt you accumulate and the more you risk losing access to new and existing markets. The longer you wait to adopt standards and best practices, the more interest you’ll accumulate on accessibility barriers and costs for remediation.
Your challenge
This research is designed to help organizations who are looking to:
- Build a business case for accessibility.
- Ensure that digital assets, products, and services are accessible to everyone, internally and externally.
- Support staff and build skills to support the organization with accessibility and accommodation.
- Get assistance figuring out where to start on the road to accessibility compliance and beyond.
The cost of inaction related to accessibility is rising. Preparing for accessibility earlier helps prevent tech debt; the longer you wait to address your accessibility obligations, the more costly it gets.
More than 3,500 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in the US in 2020, up more than 50% from 2018.
Source: UsableNet. Inc.
Common obstacles
These barriers make accessibility difficult to address for many organizations:
- You don’t know where your gaps in understanding are. Recognizing the importance of accessibility and how it fits into the bigger picture is key to developing buy-in.
- Too often organizations focus on mitigating risk by being compliance driven. Shifting focus to the user experience, internally and externally, will realize better results.
- Conventional approaches to accessibility often fail because the expectation is for users to do the hard work. One in five people have a permanent disability, but it’s likely everyone will be faced with some sort of disability at some point in their lives.1 Your organization has to be doing at least 80% of the hard work.2
- Other types of compliance reside clearly with one area of the organization. Accessibility, however, has many homes: IT, user experience (UX), customer experience (CX), and even HR.
1. Smashing Magazine
2. Harvard Business Review, 2021
90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2020
Only 4% of those that claim to prioritize diversity consider disability in those initiatives.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2020
The four principles of accessibility
WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) identifies four principles of accessibility. WCAG is the most referenced standard in website accessibility lawsuits.
Source: eSSENTIAL Accessibility, 2022
Why organizations address accessibility
Top three reasons:
| 61% | 62% | 78% |
|---|---|---|
| To comply with laws | To provide the best UX | To include people with disabilities |
Source: Level Access
Still, most businesses aren’t meeting compliance standards. Even though legislation has been in place for over 30 years, a 2022 study by WebAIM of 1,000,000 homepages returned a 96.8% WCAG 2.0 failure rate.
Source: Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice
How organizations prioritize digital accessibility
43% rated it as a top priority.
36% rated it as important.
Fewer than 5% rated as either low priority or not even on the radar.
More than 65% agreed or strongly agreed it’s a higher priority than last year.
Source: Angel Business Communications
Organizations expect consumers to do more online
The pandemic led to many businesses going digital and more people doing things online.
Source: Statistics Canada
Disability is part of being human
Merriam-Webster defines disability as a “physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person’s ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions.”1
The World Health Organization (WHO) points out that a crucial part of the definition of disability is that it’s not just a health problem, but the environment impacts the experience and extent of disability. Inaccessibility creates barriers for full participation in society.2
The likelihood of you experiencing a disability at some point in your life is very high, whether a physical or mental disability, seen or unseen, temporary or permanent, severe or mild.2
Many people acquire disabilities as they age yet may not identify as “a person with a disability.”3 Where life expectancies are over 70 years of age, 11.5% of life is spent living with a disability. 4
“Extreme personalization is becoming the primary difference in business success, and everyone wants to be a stakeholder in a company that provides processes, products, and services to employees and customers with equitable, person-centered experiences and allows for full participation where no one is left out.”
– Paudie Healy, CEO, Universal Access
1. Merriam-Webster
2. World Health Organization
3. Digital Leaders, as cited in WAI, 2018
4. Disabled World, as cited in WAI, 2018
Untapped talent resource
Common myths about people with disabilities:
- They can’t work.
- They need more time off or are absent more often.
- Only basic, unskilled work is appropriate for them.
- Their productivity is lower than that of coworkers.
- They cost more to recruit, train, and employ.
- They decrease others’ productivity.
- They’re not eligible for governmental financial incentives (e.g. apprentices).
- They don’t fit in.
These assumptions prevent organizations from hiring valuable people into the workforce and retaining them.
Source: Forbes
50% to 70% of people with disabilities are unemployed in industrialized countries. In the US alone, 61 million adults have a disability.
Source: United Nations, as cited in Forbes
Info-Tech’s methodology for the accessibility business case for IT
| 1. Understand Current State | 2. Plan for Buy-in | 3. Prepare Your Business Case | |
| Phase Steps |
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| Phase Outcomes |
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Insight Summary
| Insight 1 | The longer you put off accessibility, the more tech debt you accumulate and the more you risk losing access to new and existing markets. The longer you wait to adopt standards and best practices, the more interest you’ll accumulate on accessibility barriers and costs for remediation. | |
| Insight 2 | Implementing accessibility feels counterintuitive to IT departments. IT always wants to optimize and move forward, but with accessibility you may stay at one level for what feels like an uncomfortably long period. Don’t worry; building consistency and shifting culture takes time. | |
| Insight 3 | Accessibility goes beyond compliance, which should be an outcome, not the objective. With 1 billion people worldwide with some form of disability, nearly everyone likely has a connection to disability, whether it be in themselves, family, or colleagues. The market of people with disabilities has a spending power of more than $6 trillion.1 |
1. WAI, 2018
Blueprint deliverables
This blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals.
Accessibility Business Case Template
The business case for accessibility is strong. Use this template to communicate to senior leaders the benefits and challenges of accessibility and the risks of inaction.
Accessibility Maturity Assessment
Use this assessment to understand your current accessibility maturity.
Blueprint benefits
| Business Benefits | IT Benefits |
|---|---|
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Measure the value of this blueprint
Improve stakeholder satisfaction and engagement
- Tracking measures to understand the value of this blueprint is a critical part of the process.
- Monitor employee engagement, overall stakeholder satisfaction with IT, and the overall end-customer satisfaction.
- Remember, accessibility is not a one-and-done project – just because measures are positive does not mean your work is done.
In phase 2 of this blueprint, we will help you establish current-state and target-state metrics for your organization.
Suggested Metrics
Overall end-customer satisfaction
Monies saved through cost optimization efforts
Employee engagement
Monies save through application rationalization and standardization
For more metrics ideas, see the Info-Tech IT Metrics Library.
Executive Brief Case Study
INDUSTRY
Technology
SOURCE
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), 2018
Investing in accessibility
With an innovative edge, Google invests in accessibility with the objective of making life easier for everyone. Google has created a broad array of accessibility innovations in its products and services so that people with disabilities get as much out of them as anyone else.
Part of Google’s core mission, accessibility means more to Google than implementing fixes. It is viewed positively by the organization and drives it to be more innovative to make information available to everyone. Google approaches accessibility problems not as barriers but as ways to innovate and discover breakthroughs that will become mainstream in the future.
Results
Among Google’s innovations are contrast minimums, auto-complete, voice-control, AI advances, and machine learning auto-captioning. All of these were created for accessibility purposes but have positively impacted the user experience in general for Google.
Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs
| DIY Toolkit | Guided Implementation | Workshop | Consulting |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." | "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." | "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." | "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project." |
Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.
Guided Implementation
A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.
A typical GI is 4 to 6 calls over the course of 2 to 4 months.
What does a typical GI on this topic look like?
| Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Phase 3 |
|---|---|---|
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Call #1: Discuss motivation for the initiative and foundational knowledge requirements. Call #2: Discuss next steps to assess current accessibility maturity. |
Call #3: Discuss stakeholder engagement and future-state analysis. Call #4: Discuss defining goals and objectives, along with roles and responsibilities. |
Call #5: Review draft business case presentation. Call #6: Discuss post-approval steps and timelines. |
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
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Guided Implementation 1: Understand Your Current State
- Call 1: Discuss motivation for the initiative and foundational knowledge requirements.
- Call 2: Discuss next steps to assess current accessibility maturity.
Guided Implementation 2: Plan for Senior Leader Buy-In
- Call 1: Discuss stakeholder engagement and future-state analysis.
- Call 2: Discuss defining goals and objectives, along with roles and responsibilities.
Guided Implementation 3: Prepare Your Business Case and Get Approval
- Call 1: Review draft business case presentation.
- Call 2: Discuss post-approval steps and timelines.
Contributors
- Fleur Gervais, Manager Accessibility and Adaptive Technology Program, Canada Border Services Agency
- Paudie Healy, CEO, Universal Access
- Cam Beaudoin, Owner, Accelerated Accessibility
- Clive Loseby, Access By Design
- Fraser Shein, Founder and CEO, Quillsoft
- Jose Velasco, Program Director & Autism at Work Ambassador, SAP
- Jordyn Zimmerman, Director of Professional Development, The Nora Project
- Hector Osborne Rodriguez, Sr. Manager – Front End Development, Web Accessibility Lead
- Cinnamon Clark, Practice Lead, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Services, McLean & Company
- Liam Nickerson, Vice President, Creative, Info-Tech Research Group
- 2 anonymous contributors
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