Accessibility for Return on Investment
Its getting hard to remember the exact number of web managers and business representatives who’ve blown my advice away. Accessibility in their world is hard and expensive and nobody’s going to tell them how to build a website, right? Web design is one of those areas where any advice is often interpreted between the receiving ears as “your site is crap”. Which may or may not be the case. When what I’m probably saying is they have a moral and legal obligation to make their site more available to other technologies and a wider audience of users. Managers need to consider the ethical and legal ramifications of creating software under flawed and false assumptions.
But more than that, what I’m probably really trying to put over in that conversation is that for the small cost of developing for a wider audience – which is exactly what accessibility is all about – the business returns can be significantly higher, too. Yes, your current site works quite well. But it could work better. It could open its doors to a wider audience with significantly more potential to engage the market segment you’re interested in. Its not just about blind people.
In fact, putting meaningful alternate text descriptions on images and utilising the title element, or using legends and fieldsets with labels in forms, costs small change. Unless you’re putting up large video / audio / animation you’re pretty much only looking at low complexity, low effort enhancements. Especially if you design for it from the beginning and especially if you bring in someone who knows what they’re doing.
Which is why its so funny that many managers turn off their radar when Web Standards and Web Accessibility walk in the door. They’re hearing cost and we’re talking quality. We’re actually trying to get it across to them that its about making more money! It should be a conversation about return on investment.
