Unlocking the value of accessible products and services
Access to digital products and services is defined as a basic human right in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD). Accessible products and services are not just inclusive and morally right thing, they also improve engagement, efficiency and revenue.
Service
The state of affairs
According to research from 2023, only 4% of the top 1 million websites worldwide are fully accessible to all potential users. With around 1 billion people (13% of the global population) living with some form of disability, that’s a lot of potential customers not being adequately served.
Forrester suggests some reasons for this bias toward the able-bodied and able-minded: 40% of public organizations and 26% of private businesses identify lack of funding as the main barrier, followed by lack of know-how and also a lack of executive support.
Accessibility is not yet widely seen as an obvious strategy to hit profitability targets. However, this is starting to change as executives become more aware of the commercial and reputational potential of accessibility. For example, a recent European Commission study analyzed public sector organizations implementing accessibility improvements. It states that the majority (59%) of the participants identified a significant increase in customer numbers, and therefore, the investments in accessibility had a positive return on investment. In the private sector, small changes in accessible design have been shown to have multi-million-dollar impacts on revenue, even for medium-sized businesses.
Just like a dropped curb helps wheelchair users and parents with a stroller, digital accessibility improves the experience for a wide range of users. Enabling multiple ways to retrieve and use information is a cornerstone of inclusive design, and it can transform products and services. However, creating accessible digital products and services requires going beyond thinking about screen readers and dictation tools. A range of stakeholders and everyone in product teams need to think about accessibility from the start of every project. Each decision’s impact on accessibility should be considered in the strategy, design, build, launch, and optimization phases.
The borderline between basic usability and explicitly accessible features is blurry.
That’s why calculating the commercial impact of accessibility implementation can be challenging.
However, even when accounting for very conservative click-through rates, we get to sizeable figures: Forrester and Microsoft report that poor accessibility could mean €2.3 million in lost revenue for a midsized retail company with an average of 1 million site users, €50 worth of baskets, and a 2.3% conversion rate.
The commercial case for accessibility – 3 whys
01.
Extend the product from many to all
02.
Make your value proposition more visible
03.
Avoid costly lawsuits, redesign and customer churn
Investing in accessibility can improve your search rankings, get your content referenced more frequently by publicly available AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Gemini) and boost visibility and engagement across the internet.
Where to start with accessibility – 3 hows
01.
Build accessibility into your design system
02.
Set up accessibility tools and automate with AI
03.
Gather insights from impaired users and iterate
If services do not respect the new rules, then as of June 28, 2025, customers will be able to file complaints before national courts.
Case study: Implementing an automated accessibility check for Estonian digital public services
Nortal has been working with RIA (a governmental information systems agency) for several years, helping to shape and develop the Estonian e-services portal Eesti.ee. As a part of our latest project, we have built an entire component library called CVI that implements a design system used at Eesti.ee. Since CVI is used in government-level projects, the requirements for usability and accessibility are high and an accessibility testing engine had to be implemented.
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Mikko Kaipio
Mikko is Nortal’s Global Head of Product Design where he helps our clients rethink their design capabilities. With nearly 20 years of experience, Mikko specializes in offering full spectrum design services across all industries to ensure increased business value.
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