The Challenge of Measuring Accessibility Impact

As accessibility professionals, we constantly face a fundamental question from business stakeholders: "What's the ROI of our accessibility investments?" It's a fair question. Companies typically evaluate investments by measuring clear returns - put X money in, get Y return out. This process requires measuring the impact of every product or feature against conversion rates, engagement metrics, revenue improvements, or other key performance indicators.

The Multi-Dimensional Value of Accessibility

In my previous post about "The 4 Motivations for Accessibility," I discussed how accessibility serves multiple business purposes:

1. Defensive value: Reducing legal risk and avoiding costly lawsuits

2. Competitive advantage: Opening your product to a significant market segment - people with disabilities who would otherwise arrive at your website and leave because they can't use it

3. Brand perception and marketing: Organizations ignoring accessibility needs can be perceived as villains, while those demonstrating genuine care for accessibility are often viewed as saints. This perception directly impacts public sentiment, brand loyalty, and ultimately, your bottom line

Logic suggests we should see improved KPIs after making websites accessible - higher revenue, better engagement, lower bounce rates, and so on. But this creates a measurement challenge: How can we know these improvements specifically come from serving people with disabilities?

Accessibility creates value across legal protection, market reach, and brand perception—making it a strategic business investment, not just a compliance task.

The Attribution Problem

Even when we observe better performance on accessible websites, several attribution issues arise:

1. Accessibility improvements benefit all users, not just those with disabilities

2. Teams who prioritize accessibility often excel in other areas too (SEO, HTML/CSS best practices, browser optimization)

3. We can't isolate the direct impact of accessibility on business metrics

The ideal solution would be tracking specific metrics for assistive technology users - seeing more screen reader users completing purchase flows, or observing reduced bounce rates among keyboard-only users. This would provide conclusive evidence that accessibility improvements directly drive business results.

The Privacy Shield

Here's where we hit a significant roadblock: browsers intentionally don't reveal when users are using assistive technology or navigating by keyboard alone. This privacy shield exists for good reason - to prevent website builders from creating limited "accessible versions" that they only serve to users with disabilities, while everyone else gets a better experience.

The goal is to encourage universal design that works for everyone, regardless of ability. But this privacy protection makes it extremely difficult to prove direct correlations between accessibility investments and business outcomes from the disability community.

Why Measurement Matters

Most websites still aren't accessible, as confirmed by the The WebAIM Million Accessibility Report. Without clear, compelling business cases showing that "accessibility = more money," it remains challenging to convince management that accessibility isn't just about compliance but represents a profitable competitive advantage.

The framing of accessibility fundamentally impacts how organizations allocate resources. When management views accessibility solely as a compliance issue, they typically dedicate minimal resources to meet the bare minimum requirements. However, when accessibility is recognized as a competitive advantage - like any other business differentiator - the equation changes dramatically. The more you invest in creating exceptional accessibility, the greater your competitive advantage becomes, making it worthwhile to create truly outstanding experiences for everyone.

If we could demonstrate that greater accessibility investments yield proportionally greater returns, more businesses would prioritize inclusive design. And ultimately, regardless of motivation - compliance, profit, or genuine inclusion - the end result of more accessible websites and apps creates a better world for everyone.

Without access to assistive technology usage data, accessibility improvements often go unmeasured—making it difficult to demonstrate ROI and justify further investment.

Moving Forward

We need better approaches to measuring and proving the business value of accessibility. Some possibilities include:

• Controlled studies comparing accessible versus inaccessible experiences

• Industry-wide benchmarking and comparative analysis

• Innovative proxy metrics that respect privacy while indicating accessibility usage

• More comprehensive user research with disability communities

What do you think? If you know about compelling business cases for accessibility, or have ideas about how we can better measure and prove the ROI, please share them in the comments. Together, we can build the evidence base needed to drive greater investment in digital accessibility.