The Business Case for Building an ADA Compliant Website

Apr 17, 2024 | ADA/WCAG Conformance

Chart showing increase in sales volume

Having an Accessible Website Is Good for Business

Most of the business owners we talk with want an accessible website for two reasons. It’s the right thing to do, and they’d rather not get sued. Both are good reasons. What surprises a lot of them is that accessibility can also bring in customers they didn’t know they were missing.

Very few businesses set out to build a website that shuts people out. It usually happens because nobody told them the site needed to be accessible, or because whoever built it didn’t know how.

Upward trending graph stating that an accessible website can increase sales volume.

There are three big ways accessibility pays off: more customers, less legal risk, and a brand that lives up to what it says.

1. A Market That’s Easy to Overlook

More than 1 in 4 adults in the United States reported a disability in the CDC’s most recent national data. That’s over 70 million people, plus the spouses, kids, parents and friends who shop with them and for them.

Around the world, the Return on Disability Group’s 2024 report puts the number of people with disabilities at about 1.6 billion, and estimates that they and their families control more than $18 trillion in spending power. In North America and Europe alone, people with disabilities have over $2.6 trillion in disposable income.

Those customers are online like everyone else. When your site works for them, you have a shot at their business. When it doesn’t, most won’t struggle through it. They’ll go to a competitor whose site they can use, and many won’t come back.

Accessible design also helps customers who would never call themselves disabled: older shoppers, people on a phone in bright sunlight, anyone with a broken wrist. Clear, simple, well built pages are easier for everybody.

Share of digital accessibility lawsuits by company revenue, first half of 2025. Source: UsableNet.

2. Lowering Your Legal Risk

Digital accessibility lawsuits aren’t slowing down. UsableNet counted 4,187 of them in 2024, then 2,019 more in just the first half of 2025, which puts this year on pace for close to 5,000.

Most of these suits aren’t aimed at giant corporations. In the first half of 2025, about 64 percent were filed against companies with less than $25 million in annual revenue. Online stores take the biggest hit, followed by restaurants and food service.

Settlements for smaller businesses usually land somewhere between $5,000 and $20,000, according to attorney Kris Rivenburgh. On top of that you pay your own lawyer, and you still have to fix the website. Building it right the first time is almost always cheaper.

It’s also worth knowing that one lawsuit tends to invite another. In 2024, about 41 percent of federal cases were filed against companies that had already been sued over accessibility before.

3. Living Up to Your Brand

Take a look at your own mission statement or About page. Chances are it says something about being welcoming, helpful, customer focused or part of the community. An inaccessible website quietly tells millions of people the opposite.

Shoppers notice how businesses treat people, and word travels fast in the disability community. People share which stores, restaurants and services work for them and which ones don’t, and those recommendations carry a lot of weight with friends and family.

An accessible website is a real, visible way to show you mean what you say.

If you’d like to know how your current site measures up, get in touch. We’re happy to look at it with you and talk through what it would take.

Sources and Further Reading

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