Accessibility helps your company increase revenue, resilience, and customer trust while lowering costs. It does this by helping you win more customers and deepen relationships with ones you already have. Recent actions by the US federal government haven’t changed this. Our research shows that:

  • There are at least 17 major ways that accessibility helps companies improve their bottom line. To name just a few: It lessens the incidence of — and cost to solve — complaints from customers with disabilities. It avoids the need for legal support to address demand letters and lawsuits. It helps attract and retain employees who value accessibility. It helps service and technology providers win contracts with businesses and government entities globally that require accessibility.
  • Accessibility is a billion-customer opportunity. If your experiences are not accessible, you’re turning away a population of 1.3 billion globally that spends $1.9 trillion annually. Add in that segment’s friends and family members who prefer to do business with brands that don’t shut out their loved ones, and you have an additional 3.3 billion people who prefer brands that prioritize accessibility. Accessibility also means better experiences for all customers (known as the curb-cut effect), as it leads to better usability and helps anyone who is experiencing a temporary or situational disability.

You Can Still Get In Legal Trouble If Your Experiences Aren’t Accessible

There are many laws protecting the rights of people with disabilities in the US and abroad, despite the US federal government’s movement away from it. Note that:

  • You can still be sued under Title III of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In 2024 alone, there were over 4,000 digital accessibility lawsuits, according to an annual study from UsableNet. These lawsuits show no signs of slowing down, as court rulings increasingly interpret Title III of the ADA’s “place of public accommodation” terminology to mean digital experiences as well as physical locations. Accessibility shows up in other federal laws, such as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA).
  • Many international jurisdictions remain committed to accessibility. Compliance deadlines for the EU’s European Accessibility Act — which requires companies that operate in the EU to create accessible experiences — arrive in June 2025. This will lead more companies to commit to accessibility. There are strict laws in other regions, too, such as the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) in Canada.

If you’re a Forrester client and would like to ask me questions or work through your own business case for accessibility, you can set up a conversation with me. You can also follow or connect with me on LinkedIn if you’d like.

A big thank you to my colleagues Christina McAllister and Judy Weader for their input on this post.