How Do Accessibility Issues Affect Online Business?
As the web has progressed, the level of skill and investment necessary to make content and functionality accessible to all users has increased dramatically. However, if businesses choose to ignore accessibility issues, not only will they be denying many users access to their site, they may also be denying themselves access to a signification part of their potential market.
The concept of web accessibility is concerned with ensuring that online content and services can be used by individuals with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive disabilities. For years people with disabilities were left in the dark by large sections of the World Wide Web, until in the mid noughties, as the web standards movement began to find its feet, everyone began talking about web accessibility and it looked like a fully accessible web was on the horizon.
Any getting-started article on the topic would (and still will) include a few encouraging sentences explaining how incredibly easy it is to make web content accessible. This is true for simple, article style content, however as “web sites” began to give way to “web applications” and the sophistication of activities being performed on the web increased, so did the level of knowledge required by web development professionals to ensure sites were truly accessible.
Along Came AJAX
Then AJAX came along making web sites more interactive and responsive than ever, while also making accessibility harder than ever to achieve. Many concluded that it was not feasible to create a modern compelling web experience without sacrificing accessibility. While such a conclusion may seem somewhat pessimistic, it’s certainly true that web developers need to have a greater level of knowledge of accessibility issues than ever before, and the level of investment necessary to achieve true accessibility is not insignificant.
So why bother?
The first reason is legal. Just like with their bricks-and-mortar facilities, UK businesses are obliged to ensure that their online services are accessible to disabled people under the Disability Discrimination Act. However, it is unlikely that action would ever be taken against most companies on this basis, so let’s take a look at the business case.
Many will jump to the conclusion that disabled people don’t matter to their business. Take the example of an online book shop; does it matter if a blind internet user can’t use their website? The immediate reaction might be to say no, because she can’t read books. However, maybe our visually challenged protagonist has a sighted friend who reads to her, or perhaps she is shopping for a gift for a fully sighted loved one. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that there could be any number of reasons for someone with a disability of any form or severity to want to use a particular website. Furthermore, our example blind web user may find visiting a bricks-and-mortar business an immense chore, and therefore be more likely to turn to the web. The fact is that the internet can bring many goods and services within the reach of those for whom they were previously difficult or impossible to access and provides many businesses with an opportunity to access an area of the market that they would have struggled to access in the past.
Apart from the legal and business reasons, there is of course one more reason to consider…it’s the right thing to do. It’s simply unfair to exclude a portion of people from using your website due to differences in physical or cognitive capabilities.
