The 4 Motivations for Accessibility - The Big WHY?

As accessibility professionals, we often focus on the technical "how" of implementation, but today I want to discuss something equally important - the "why." In my years leading accessibility initiatives, I've identified four compelling motivations for making your digital products accessible. What I've discovered is that different people are motivated by different things, which is why I always present all four motivations - so everyone will find something that resonates with them personally.

My goal with a good "why" is to convince anyone that digital accessibility is important for their website or app and move them from asking "why bother?" to asking "how?" - how do I make MY site or app accessible? That's when we can start the more technical discussions. I want people to feel that by not making their site accessible, they're missing an opportunity, not avoiding a hurdle.

1. The Business Case - Market Size Matters

If you're looking for a clear business motivation, consider the massive market opportunity. Approximately 17% of the global population - one in six people - has some form of disability:

• 253 million people with visual impairments

• 466 million people with hearing loss

• Millions more with motor or cognitive disabilities

This represents a larger market than many countries! When marketing teams get excited about targeting millennials or specific regions, they're often pursuing smaller populations than the disability community.

The advantage? While everyone competes for mainstream customers' attention, few companies adequately serve people with disabilities. When you provide accessible solutions, you could become the only viable option for millions of potential customers.

But it's not just about the 17% with permanent disabilities. Consider:

• Older adults experiencing age-related changes in vision, hearing, and dexterity

• People with temporary disabilities (like a broken arm)

• Those in situational limitations (holding a baby, driving, or in bright sunlight)

When we account for all these scenarios, studies suggest that at any given moment, approximately 25% of the population may have difficulty using your product if it's not designed with accessibility in mind. That's one in four potential customers who might abandon your product simply because they can't use it effectively.

2. The Curb Cut Effect - Better Products for Everyone

Almost everything we do for accessibility makes products better for everyone - a phenomenon known as the "curb cut effect."

Curb cuts (the ramps built into sidewalks) were designed for wheelchair users but benefit people pushing strollers, riding bicycles, or pulling suitcases. Similarly, digital accessibility features improve the experience for all users:

• Proper heading structure helps screen reader users and improves SEO

• Strong color contrast assists those with low vision and anyone using their phone in bright sunlight

• Captions benefit deaf users and anyone watching videos in noisy environments or in public spaces where audio isn't appropriate

Accessibility forces us to understand the essence of our products and ensure we deliver the intended experience to everyone. By focusing on accessible design, we create more intuitive, navigable, and usable products—benefiting all users regardless of ability.

The curb-cut effect: A range of people of all ages next to a crossing, road, and park show how the curb cut design for disabilities benefits everyone. image source: https://sketchplanations.com/the-curb-cut-effect

3. The Legal Imperative - Avoiding Costly Consequences

If increasing your market and improving your product aren't motivating enough, consider the legal implications. Most countries now have accessibility laws, and the number of lawsuits increases yearly.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend as more people relied on digital services and encountered barriers. When people couldn't use essential online services, they turned to legal action.

Particularly in the EU, the landscape is changing with EN 301 549 (to learn more check out the previous post about EN 301 549) , which establishes accessibility requirements for ICT products and services. This standard is becoming increasingly important across European countries, making compliance not just recommended but mandatory. Companies that fail to meet these standards face significant legal and financial risks.

The cost of retrofitting accessibility into an existing product is typically much higher than building it accessibly from the start. Investing in accessibility early isn't just good ethics—it's good business that helps you avoid potentially costly legal battles down the road.

4. Inclusion - A Matter of Human Dignity

But the most important reason to make your product accessible, beyond business opportunities and legal requirements, accessibility is fundamentally about human dignity. Just as we don't discriminate based on race, gender, or religion, we shouldn't discriminate based on ability.

When we see someone unable to enter a mall or airport because of a single step or poorly designed entrance, we feel anger and frustration at the thoughtlessness of that design. Yet many of us then go and build digital products with equally thoughtless barriers—products that exclude millions of potential users.

Remember, it only takes one accessibility blocker to prevent someone from completing a task in your application.

Some might argue that certain products—art, gaming, etc.—don't need to be accessible. Yet even the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has found ways to make art accessible through multi-sensory experiences, allowing visitors to smell the paint, feel the vase, and touch brush strokes.

If art museums can make visual masterpieces accessible to blind visitors, surely we can make our digital products work for everyone.

A man in a wheelchair faces a staircase leading to a train station entrance, unable to access it. The station has no visible ramp or elevator, only stairs leading up to glass double doors under a blue ‘Train Station’ sign

Conclusion: Building for Everyone

These four motivations—business opportunity, universal benefit, legal compliance, and human dignity—combine to make a compelling case for accessibility. Whether you're driven by profit, innovation, risk management, or ethics, accessibility should be a core part of your product development process.

What's particularly striking about accessibility is its binary impact on brand perception. Companies that ignore accessibility are increasingly perceived as "evil" - as deliberately excluding people with disabilities. We've seen this play out in high-profile cases like the Domino's Pizza lawsuit, where the company faced not only legal consequences but also significant public backlash and damage to their brand image.

Conversely, companies that embrace accessibility are seen as "good" - as caring and inclusive. This positive brand perception extends beyond the disability community and resonates with all consumers who value social responsibility. Moreover, accessible companies gain loyal customers from the disability community who often have limited options and will choose the businesses they can actually use over inaccessible competitors.

The choice is increasingly clear: accessibility isn't just the right thing to do—it's the smart thing to do for your business, your brand, and your customers.

Let's commit to building products that anyone can use, regardless of their abilities or circumstances. Because good design is inclusive design.

Infographic titled ‘Why Digital Accessibility Is Important’ showing four reasons: good for business (dollar sign and arrow icon), makes the product better (computer with checkmark icon), legal requirement (document and gavel icon), and it’s the right thing to do (three human figures symbolizing inclusion)