The Importance of Digital Accessibility
Every day people visit your website who navigate it differently than you. Some may not use a mouse, some may not be able to see the screen, some may need additional time to process the information within it. Digital accessibility is about ensuring your website is available and works for all of these users—and just like the accessibility of your physical business space (if you have one), it’s a legal requirement. The articles in this resource guide are designed to help you better understand what digital accessibility encompass, your responsibilities to provide it, and a process to begin evaluating and improving the accessibility of your website.
What digital accessibility is
Digital accessibility is the practice of designing and building websites that can be used by people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities. It is not a single fix or feature—accessibility is rooted in the quality of your website’s overall experience.
Accessibility is about whether or not someone can use your site at all, not just whether it looks good or loads quickly.
Who digital accessibility affects
While digital accessibility is meant to support those with visual, auditory, physical, and cognitive disabilities, the scope of who it impacts is broader than you might think. Some examples of user groups who are impacted by digital accessibility include:
- Older adults: The population of aging internet users is growing, and with it increases the need for accessibility considerations like visual contrast and responsive page magnification.
- People with situational limitations: A broad catchall, digital accessibility can support people dealing with temporary constraints such as:
- A user with a broken arm may be unable to use their computer mouse and rely on their keyboard for navigation.
- A user in a noise environment may rely on audio/video captions.
- A user in bright sunlight may adjust the contrast settings of their display or browser to see the screen.
Businesses often assume that they don’t need to worry about their website’s accessibility because they don’t think they have any disabled users. The reality is that digital accessibility tools are not able to identified and tracked in website analytics, making their use a significant and often under-estimated share of any current or potential users.
Why digital accessibility matters for small businesses
It hurts real customers
The impacts of digital accessibility—both positive and negative—are often far less visible than the impacts of accessibility within a physical space, but they are just as real. In additional to leaving you open to a lawsuit, ignoring digital accessiblilty means you’re loosing out on a large group of potential users or customers.
Disability rates within the united states
| Population | Condition | Considerations | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13.9% | Adults that struggle with concentration, memory, or decision-making. | Cognitive accessibility impacts user's ability to process information and make decisison. | CDC |
| 15% | Adults that have some level of difficulty hearing. | Auditory accessibility impacts user's ability to understand and interact with audio-based media. It's important to ensure videos have caption and volume controls, and recorded content has readable transcript alternatives. | NIH |
| 4.2 Million | Adults over 40, with significant vision impairment. | One of the top 10 disabilities for adults, visual accessibility is one of the most impactful issues to address. Ensuring adequate font-size, color-contrast, and screen-reader support makes a major impact. | CDC |
An inaccessible website turns customers away before you’re ever aware of them. Many to most users who encounter barriers on your website won’t reach out to report the issue—they’ll simply leave.
It carries legal weight
The US courts and Department of Justice (DOJ) have been shown to consistently apply Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to websites, and it’s a myth that only larger organizations are held accountable for infractions—the size of an organization does not affect it’s ADA accountability, and smaller businesses are frequently the target of lawsuits related to accessibility issues within their website.
Federal filings by business size
| Year | Companies with annual revenue less than 25M | Companies with annual revenue greater than 25M |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 64% | 36% |
| 2024 | 67% | 33% |
| 2023 | 73% | 27% |
Data is sourced from UsableNet’s 2025 Year-End Digital Accessibility Lawsuit Report.
It reflects on your business
Awareness around digital accessibility is increasing. As such, it’s impacting how customers evaluate whether a business is trustworthy and professional. An inaccessible website signals, intentionally or not, that some customers aren’t welcome at your business.
Another important aspect is that many digital accessibility requirements align with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) guidelines. If you’ve optimized your website for SEO, you may have less accessibility issues. Conversely, if you ignore accessibility you may be negatively impacting your SEO—and reducing your businesses’s reach even further.
What digital accessibility is not
There’s a lot of misunderstanding around what the legal requirements and practical implementation of digital accessibility actually looks like. As you begin to explore and invest in improving the accessibility of your website, remember that digital accessibility:
- Is not isolated to large corporations or governments. Businesses of all size are expected to maintain accessible experiences.
- Cannot be solved by a single tool, plugin, or one-time fix.
- Is not optional for any businesses with a public-facing website.
- Is not a single project with a clear finish line. Digital accessibility requires ongoing attention as your site grows and changes.
How digital accessibility problems occur
Most website accessibility failures are not intentional. They are a result of building or maintaining a site without understanding how different people will use it—but being unaware of your website’s accessibility issues does not protect your from legal accountability. Some common causes for digital accessibility failures stem from the following:
- Using website templates that weren’t developed with accessibility in mind.
- Relying on third-party tools, website plugins, or embedded functionality that introduces accessibility barriers.
- Adding new content or features, without performing ongoing accessibility reviews.
Don’t worry, most accessibility issues will be fixable without needing to completely rebuild or redesign a website.
How to use this resource guide
AccelerateUX was founded to bridge the gap between business owners and professional consultants by providing educational resources and practical advice for maintaining and improving websites. As such, each article in this resource is written for readers without a technical or accessibility background—no prior knowledge required.
We have structured the articles in this resource to flow from broad overviews in Getting Started, to in-depth explanations of important topics in Key Concepts, to more step-by-step instruction and detailed guidance in Best Practices. Articles can be read in sequential order or you can jump to the topics you are most interested in.
While accessibility guidelines can feel overwhelming they don’t have to be, and you don’t have to fix everything all at once. However, the longer you put off any accessibility work, the more work there will be—and the harder it will be to align your site to WCAG standards. Start soon, but start slow.