A recent study of the top 1,000,000 home pages detected 56,791,260 distinct accessibility errors – an average of 56.8 errors per page, and a 13.6% increase from the 2023 edition of the same study. That means that users with disabilities can expect to encounter errors on 1 in every 21 home page elements. 

While the public sector’s accessibility issues generate headlines, when broken down by industry, private sector organizations are the worst offenders when it comes to the number of accessibility errors found on their webpages. Organizations in the sports, retail, automotive, travel, and arts and entertainment industries have some of the highest numbers of errors per page, but others including health, finance, education, and business are not far behind. 

But any accessibility errors are too many, and having these issues on your websites, apps, or other digital services opens businesses up to regulatory risks and potential missed opportunities. So what do you need to know, and what can you do?

The legal requirements for private companies

Just as the public sector has a duty to make their services accessible to all groups, private sector businesses need to ensure that their digital products such as websites, kiosks, mobile and web applications are equally accessible to people with disabilities. In 2006, the UN passed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the first comprehensive human rights treaty of the 21st century. It laid the foundation for web accessibility at the international level and established accessibility as a human right. Article 9 makes mention of the promotion of “the design, development, production and distribution of accessible information and communications technologies and systems at an early stage, so that these technologies and systems become accessible at minimum cost.” 

In the US, several regulations make accessibility a legal requirement for the private sector. The most notable is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a federal law that was passed in 1990 to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities in many areas of public life. Title III of the ADA requires that any business that is open to the public provides full and equal enjoyment of their goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations to people with disabilities. This rule considers websites to be "public accommodations" and mandates that people with disabilities have equal access to them.

Some private sector organizations in certain industries face even further restrictions. In May 2024, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a rule that increases healthcare protections for people with disabilities under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The new rule defines what accessibility means for websites and mobile applications, and sets a clear technical standard for ensuring that any healthcare or human service activities delivered through these platforms are readily accessible to and usable for all. 

Regulation is increasing on the statewide and local levels as well, further impacting private sector businesses depending on where they trade. For example, California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination by all business establishments in the state, is wide reaching and opens the door for cases related to web accessibility. Other states and regions are developing their own similar laws, which once in effect, will hold private companies to a higher standard.  

The consequences of being inaccessible

Ignoring or forgoing digital accessibility considerations not only opens the door to regulatory noncompliance and its related consequences, but also comes with other financial and customer-related consequences. These include:

• Loss of business: If you are unwilling or unable to make concessions for all customer groups, then those left behind will have no choice but to do business with someone who meets their needs.
• Falling behind the competition: Every advantage for attracting and retaining business matters. By excluding consumers with disabilities, private sector organizations may be missing major opportunities.
• Hits to reputation: Negative word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire, especially online. If an individual has a bad experience with your business, they are likely to tell their peers about it or post online, which may damage others’ perception of your organization, create further loss of business, and sometimes even negative press.
• Lawsuits: Some may choose to take their grievances further and pursue legal action against your business on grounds of discrimination or regulatory noncompliance. This has happened to several notable companies over the past two decades, but in 2023, 77% of ADA-related lawsuits were filed against organizations with under $25 million in revenue. There’s a lot to be learned from some landmark private sector decision
  • Target (2008): In 2008, the National Federation for the Blind sued the retailer, claiming their site was not accessible to people who are blind. The landmark settlement included a compensation fund of $6 million and an agreement that Target would work with the National Federation of the Blind to ensure equal accessibility standards on their website, thus setting a legal precedent for web accessibility in the private sector.
  • Domino’s: A 2016 lawsuit claimed their digital products violated Title III of the ADA. The company fought the lawsuit before settling in 2022, but even went so far as to bring their case to the Supreme Court who refused to hear it. However, the outcome of this case clarified the digital accessibility expectations for private businesses.
  • Netflix: In 2012, the streaming giant settled a lawsuit with the National Association of the Deaf, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund (DREDF), and others to add closed captioning to all of their content, thus setting a precedent for streaming services and other entertainment companies.
  ‍

The business benefits of digital accessibility

By now, it’s clear that being inaccessible is bad for business. But besides avoiding noncompliance penalties and damage to your reputation, there are a few other benefits to being digitally accessible that you may not have considered:

• Expanded markets: More than 1 in 4 (28%) of American adults are living with some form of disability. If your products and services are not accessible, you are missing out on major market share or an opportunity to differentiate yourself from your competition. Enhancing your digital accessibility ensures that anyone who wants to be a customer can be, and entices them to be.
• More innovation: Making considerations for accessibility requires you to view your digital products and experiences through a more well-rounded lens, and may uncover other gaps, areas for improvement, or growth opportunities. Often, accessibility features can solve undiscovered issues or “situational disabilities,” leading to better, more thought out digital products and experiences that leave no one behind. 
• Happier users: By designing for different abilities, we make things better for everyone. It’s the curb cut effect; when sidewalks began to include ramps for wheelchair users, they also benefited people pushing strollers or carts, riding bicycles, and more. In a similar vein, designing for the few can impact the many by enhancing the overall usability of your website and applications.
• Better SEO: Digital accessibility may also help drive traffic to your website and applications in the first place. While search engines like Google do not have a specific ranking factor for accessibility, user experience is a major component in the E-E-A-T guidelines Google uses to rank content in search results. Because websites that prioritize accessibility inherently have a better user experience, they are more likely to show up higher in search results. So while accessibility may not directly affect your SEO, it can certainly give it a boost.

Making accessibility common practice

Digital accessibility in the private sector cannot happen overnight. It’s a journey — don’t approach it as a one-time optimization, but instead bake accessibility considerations into all updates, features, and new experiences or services you introduce. But before you can move ahead, you must also ensure that your existing digital touchpoints are up to par. Develop a plan for how you intend to tackle your backlog. You may also want to gather feedback from or conduct usability testing with the disabled community to ensure you are addressing the right issues and not overlooking any gaps. The most important thing is to approach this with a structured triage plan, not a Band-Aid. 

Once you have the foundation covered, you can begin to embed accessibility best practice into your organizational DNA. Build accessibility design, development, and testing into the project roadmap for all future projects and include accessibility work in estimates with partners. Do your teams need accessibility training? If so, figure out how to close those skills gaps. As new needs or habits arise, ensure that all customers’ needs are met in any changes or updates. Like we said, this is an ongoing journey.

Here at Launch by NTT DATA, accessibility is table stakes. If you want to lead with accessibility — and, thus, lead your market — let’s talk about the best ways to do it.