Organizations embark on digital accessibility for different reasons. We can think of these reasons as models. The ROI Model of Organizational Access, which we’re going to discuss here, is one model. There are two others:
Other Organizational Models of Digital Access
- Legal/Compliance Organizational Model of Digital Access: This looks at accessibility from the regulatory standpoint. An organization enters into this model to mitigate legal risk, manage legal complaints, and comply with government regulations. Accessibility doesn’t sustain under this model when the legal action is resolved, and priorities shift elsewhere.
- Altruistic Organizational Model of Digital Access: This model considers accessibility to be a part of the organization’s ethics or social responsibility. It focuses heavily on the usability of digital assets and ensuring inclusivity. Accessibility doesn’t sustain under this model when business priorities like timing and revenue override what is perceived as a nice-to-have.
This discussion of the ROI Model is a companion to the A Unified Organizational Model of Digital Access blog; however, it is also intended to stand alone. Let’s dive in.
More People, Greater Revenue
In this context, we can think of Return on Investment as Return on Inclusion. Making a website, application, or kiosk accessible to people with disabilities is really about including them in your product, offering, or audience. The return a business realizes to its bottom line is directly related to including that group of people. Moreover, ROI relates closely to the Altruistic Model, as much of the return the business realizes is also based on the new employee and market perception.
There are three main categories of ROI that may apply to a business:
- Public Consumer ROI
- Business-to-Business ROI
- Shift Left or Organizational Maturity ROI
The Public Consumer ROI
This is the ROI most closely tied to the Altruistic Model. There are five factors that work together:
- Improved Market perception that attracts more customers.
- Improved Brand Loyalty
- Improved employee satisfaction, pride, and community involvement.
- Open access to a new and loyal market.
- Competitive advantage
We don’t have to take these factors at face value. Several statistics support the factors. To name a few:
- According to the World Health Organization, 16% of the global population has a disability. That is 1.3 people worldwide.
- The CDC Disability and Health Data System reports that 26% of adults had a disability in 2025.
- The global market was estimated at $13 Trillion in 2025.
- 71% of users with a disability will immediately leave an inaccessible website.
- eCommerce shows a 69% cart abandonment on inaccessible websites vs. 23% on accessible sites.
- In 2024, Forrister estimated a $100 return for every $1 invested in accessibility.
Business-to-Business ROI
The business-to-business ROI is very direct, and the return can be immediately obvious to the business, but not always. Many organizations require that their vendors adhere to accessibility regulations or, at least, strive to meet guidelines. Typically, this shows up in contracting or purchasing requirements as a request for an ACR in the VPAT format. The VPAT is a template that is filled out, demonstrating the level of conformance a product has to accessibility guidelines like WCAG 2.2 AA, for example.
The risk is that your product may be passed up because your competitors are accessible and demonstrating this upfront to prospects. I’ve also heard from many organizations that their sales team has been aware of these requirements for some time; however, when escalated, it is not prioritized by leadership, and the product continues with this competitive disadvantage.
Prioritizing accessibility and bringing it to your prospective clients before they ask can become a large competitive advantage. The business-to-business ROI is typically easy to track and demonstrate to leadership.
Shift Left or Organizational Maturity ROI
A follow-on to both the Public Consumer ROI and Business-to-Business ROI is the Shift Left or Organizational Maturity ROI. When an organization first takes on digital accessibility, it tends to be an ad-hoc effort. The product or website is manually audited, and automated monitoring is put in place. Issues are remediated, and a point in time where the product is accessible is reached. All this is occurring in production. However, without accessibility integrated into the organization, the product or website declines in accessibility, the problems resurface, and the process starts again. When the organization matures its accessibility capabilities and addresses accessibility in the early stages of the software development lifecycle, the cost of accessibility drops, and the risk that enters production is greatly reduced. Both of these factors contribute greatly to increasing the ROI already realized by adopting accessibility in the first place.
Why if Fails
The ROI model is probably the easiest to sustain on its own; however, it’s not without its challenges. Short of the Business-to-Business ROI, it can be very difficult to measure impact due to the lack of telemetry data, privacy policies, and the ethics associated with asking folks to disclose disabilities. Attempts can be made at correlational data, but this is typically a weak approach. This presents a challenge in evangelizing the value of the effort to leadership and can result in de-prioritization.
It is also worth noting that there is some crossover with the Legal Model, as part of the ROI in the case of public-facing assets can be attributed to a reduction in legal action and the cost associated with it.
Comments