Web Accessibility FAQ's

Some of the benefits to organizations that provide accessible Web sites include financial benefits from increased Web site use and direct cost savings.

• Increased Web Site Use
• • Increases Potential Use by More People
  • Increases Findability
  • Increases Potential Use in More Situations
  • Increases Usability
  • Increases Positive Image

• Direct Cost Savings
• • High Legal Expenses
  • Alternative Format Materials
  • Translating

• Cost Considerations
• • Initial Costs
  • • Providing training and skills development
    • Hiring expertise
    • Incorporating accessibility into procedures
    • Assessing existing Web site accessibility
    • Purchasing accessibility evaluation tools
    • Purchasing assistive technologies
    • Upgrading technologies and tools
  • On-Going Costs
  • • Additional development time
    • Additional testing time
  • Decreasing Costs
  • • Incorporating accessibility from the beginning
    • Sharing accessibility resources

Financial Benefits of Accessible Websites

Increased Web Site Use

A major benefit of Web accessibility is the potential for direct and indirect financial gains from increased Web site use. Web accessibility can make it easier for people to find a Web site, access it, and use it successfully, thus resulting in increased audience (more users) and increased effectiveness (more use).

Many organizations benefit financially when more people successfully use their Web site; for example, commercial companies can get more sales, educational institutions can get more students, and non-profit organizations can get more funding by demonstrating successful outreach and dissemination. Increasingly, Web sites are used to cut costs by decreasing customer support services and letting customers complete transactions online rather than requiring personnel and paper interactions. The many examples of cost savings from online transactions include citizens renewing licenses online, investors trading stock online, and students registering for classes online. Thus, increased site use can result in financial gains and cost savings.

Increase in audience (Web site users) can result from the following benefits of Web accessibility:

Increases potential use by more people, expands potential market share

Accessible sites can be used by more people -- including people with disabilities, older people, people with low literacy, people who are not fluent in the language of the site, people with low bandwidth connections to the Internet, people with older technologies, and new and infrequent Web users, as discussed in Social Factors -- thus increasing the market segments and number of people who can successfully use the site. An important potential market for many organizations is older people. In some countries older people are the fastest growing group of new Web users. When Web use is a significant part of a job, Web pages and applications that are accessible to more people can help with employee recruiting and employee retention. Employees, customers, and other users who become temporarily or permanently disabled or impaired due to accident, illness, or aging are more likely to be able to continue using a Web site if it is accessible.

Increases findability

Accessibility techniques increase the findability of Web pages by exposing content to search engines, both internally (within a Web site) and externally (across the World Wide Web). For example:

• Some search engines use metadata to index pages
• Alternative text for images and multimedia is available to search engines
• Most search engines access text and not images
• Some search engines give higher weight to text that is marked up as headings

Increase in effectiveness (Web site use) can result from the following benefits of Web accessibility:

Increases potential use in more situations

Accessible sites can be used in more situations. Web sites that can be used by people with disabilities can also be used more easily by people without disabilities who are limited by their situation, such as:

• in a noisy environment
• using a small black-and-white display

The WAI's Enable Content on Different Configurations section of Technical Factors describes how accessibility techniques help Web pages work with different configurations. Situational limitations such as low bandwidth and older technology are discussed in the WAI's Social Factors.

Increases usability

Accessible sites are generally more usable to everyone, including people with disabilities and people without disabilities. Increased usability means Web site users achieve their goals effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily. When users have a positive experience with a Web site, they are more likely to use the site more thoroughly, return to the site more often, and to tell others about the site ("viral marketing"). Some accessibility guidelines directly increase usability to all users, such as:

• clear and consistent design, navigation, and links
• blocks of information divided into groups
• clear and simple language as appropriate
• supplemental illustrations
• good colour contrast

Other accessibility guidelines can indirectly increase usability, for example, by making Web pages load faster, as discussed in the WAI's Access for People with Low Bandwidth Connections to the Internet and Older Technologies section of Social Factors.

Increases positive image

An organization's efforts in Web accessibility are a public relations opportunity to increase its positive image, which can increase Web site use. The WAI's Social Factors page discusses Web accessibility as a social issue and an aspect of corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR has been shown to improve financial performance, enhance brand image and reputation, increase sales and customer loyalty, increase ability to attract and retain employees, and provide access to capital and funding. Many organizations around the world provide information about CSR, such as statistics that show how CSR impacts customers.

Direct Cost Savings

In addition to the benefits from increased Web site use discussed above, many organizations realize direct cost savings from efforts to improve Web accessibility.

Many of the aspects of Web accessibility that are discussed in the WAI's Technical Factors (which includes the relevant WCAG 1.0 Checkpoints) can provide direct cost savings:

• Decreases personnel costs for maintaining the site when accessibility reduces site maintenance long term
• Decreases the amount of server capacity needed and saves on additional server costs when accessibility reduces server loading
• Decreases the need for creating multiple versions of a site for different devices when accessibility enables content to work on different devices
• Decreases the cost of upgrading to new technologies when accessibility helps take advantage of advanced Web technologies and be prepared for future Web technologies

Potential direct costs savings also result from the following benefits of Web accessibility:

Decreases potential for high legal expenses

Ensuring that Web sites are accessible reduces the risk of high legal costs associated with defending against legal action for not complying with Web accessibility requirements. Legal and Policy Factors discusses policy considerations for different organizations.

Decreases cost of alternative format materials

For organizations that provided printed materials in alternate formats (large print, embossed braille, computer disk), an accessible Web site can reduce the demand for alternate formats when people chose to use the Web, thus saving some production and distribution costs.

Decreases cost of translating

The cost of translating a Web site to other languages can be decreased by following accessibility guidelines for:

• clear and simple language as appropriate (WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 14.1)
• clear and consistent design, navigation, and links (WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 13.1, 13.3, 13.4, 13.5, 13.6, 13.7, 13.8, 14.3)
• separating content from presentation (WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 3.3)
• text and markup rather than bitmap images of text to convey information (WCAG 1.0 Checkpoint 3.1)

Cost Considerations

When accessibility is incorporated from the beginning of Web site development it is often a small percentage of the overall Web site cost.

Initial Costs

When an organization starts incorporating accessibility, there are initial investments in acquiring knowledge, establishing processes, and increased development and testing time.

Personnel-related costs associated with an initial investment in accessibility can include:

Providing training and skills development

• Providing training and skills development includes the cost of training and time away from other work. During skills development there is initially an increase in development and testing time because using new skills is often slower. In addition to training on direct accessibility issues, organizations that move to different technologies in an effort to improve accessibility might incur training costs on the new technologies.

Hiring expertise

• Many organizations starting Web accessibility efforts hire employees or consultants with accessibility expertise, such as people with disabilities to help with testing.

Incorporating accessibility into procedures

• Incorporating accessibility into protocols and procedures, such as quality assurance testing and usability evaluation, takes personnel time.

Assessing existing Web site accessibility

• When fixing an existing site, assessing (auditing or evaluating) existing Web site accessibility is a common initial cost. The assessment cost is either a direct expense if using a service outside the organization, or a personnel cost if using internal resources. Making accessibility improvements in existing Web sites is almost always more costly in personnel time than incorporating accessibility as sites are initially developed.

Potential initial capital expenditures related to Web accessibility include:

Purchasing accessibility evaluation tools

• Web accessibility evaluation tools are software that helps identify accessibility problems. While these are not a required expense, many organizations find that using accessibility evaluation tools saves time and money.

Purchasing assistive technologies

• Assistive technologies, such as those listed in Alternative Web Browsing, are used by some people with disabilities to access the Web. Developers, designers, and evaluators sometimes use assistive technologies throughout the development process to understand how people interact with Web pages and to test Web pages.

Upgrading technologies and tools

• Sometimes organizations determine that it will be more effective and efficient to implement accessibility with different, usually newer, technologies. For example, some organizations upgrade or change to authoring tool software that better supports production of accessible Web sites. (Selecting and Using Authoring Tools for Web Accessibility includes guidance on evaluating and selecting authoring tools.)

On-Going Costs

While most of the costs of Web accessibility are associated with initial accessibility efforts, there are some on-going costs to making Web sites accessible, including:

Additional development time

• Once an organization is experienced in accessibility, incorporating accessibility in a Web project often adds negligible extra time. However, for some types of accessible content additional development time is required; for example, it takes extra time to provide captions for audio.

Additional testing time

• Organizations committed to providing usable, accessible sites will likely increase testing time. Accessibility testing activities include:
• • Testing design ideas and early prototypes with assistive technologies
  • Reviewing early prototypes and final Web pages for conformance to accessibility standards and guidelines
  • Quality assurance testing of specific accessibility issues, such as checking for missing alternative text for images

The information in the WAI resource Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility can help in determining the cost impact of additional testing time.

Decreasing Costs

There are several things organizations can do to decrease the cost of implementing accessibility, including the following:

Incorporating accessibility from the beginning

• Incorporating accessibility from the beginning of a Web site development or redesign process is almost always significantly easier, less expensive, and more effective than making accessibility improvements to an existing site later as a separate project.

Sharing accessibility resources

• Most costs associated with Web accessibility are investments at an organization level, rather than costs required for each Web development project. In many organizations the initial costs can be shared among multiple projects, rather repeated for each project.

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