There are several standpoints from which to make the case for accessibility. Given different circumstances, some of these approaches might be more effective than others. However, all of them have their time and place depending on the situation and audience.
I didn’t always believe this. Earlier in my career, I was convinced that some approaches to accessibility advocacy were unquestionably better than others.
The spectrum of advocacy
My initial take was that accessibility advocacy approaches fell along a spectrum between the poles of altruism and self-centeredness. The four approaches on the spectrum and some supporting arguments for each are outlined here, taking inspiration from Onward Search’s guide Making the Case for Digital Accessibility.
The moral/ethical approach
25% of Americans and 1.3 billion people worldwide live with significant disability. This is a huge demographic, and it’s getting larger as the population ages. Everyone experiences disability as we get older, so creating accessible digital experiences is the right thing to do for all of us.
The user experience argument
Accessible digital experiences are more usable for everybody. Several principles of good mobile design closely align with accessibility concerns. An accessible interface is more flexible than an inaccessible one, allowing abled and disabled users alike to choose how they interact with it in the way that suits them best.
The business case for accessibility
A recent study found that the disability community represents $8 trillion in annual disposable income, so there is real profit to be made from accessible digital experiences. Offering accessible products and services builds a brand’s reputation and market share among people with disabilities. Search engines reward accessible websites with more prominent search results listings and penalize inaccessible ones with lower rankings.
Legal stipulations for accessibility
In 2023, more than 4500 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed. The legal responsibilities and consequences of digital accessibility are real, and they are becoming more stringent and widely enforced. For instance, the Department of Justice recently published its final rule on the ADA which stipulates that all state and local government websites and mobile apps need to comply with the WCAG within the next two to three years. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) requires any company doing business in the EU to ensure that its digital products and services are accessible. This law goes into full effect in June 2025 and will carry steep fines and even potential jail time for businesses that don’t comply with it.
I concluded that the most noble reason to make websites and digital products accessible was simply because it’s the right thing to do for people with disabilities. Creating a good user experience that everyone can use was also a good impetus.
However, advocating for accessibility to improve a business’s reputation or revenue, and especially by threatening lawsuits and other legal consequences struck me as appeals to greed and outright fear-mongering. In my mind, these last two approaches were to be avoided or considered only as a last resort. Organizations shouldn’t need these baser appeals to invest in digital accessibility.
An unexpected call to change my thinking
One day I received an unsolicited email from a sales representative at an accessibility overlay company. The email contained a screenshot of the homepage of a firm whose website I was doing accessibility work on. The image was annotated to show an accessibility issue on the page, which the email said the overlay company would be glad to help address to mitigate risk of a lawsuit.
I was frustrated by this fear-based tactic. Trying to scare an organization into purchasing an accessibility “solution” is pretty low, even for an overlay vendor. In response, I went to the overlay company’s homepage, found an accessibility defect there, took a screenshot, and annotated it to describe the problem. I then hit “Reply” to the sales rep’s message and attached the screenshot. I wrote that as a digital accessibility professional, I would be happy to work with their company to remove accessibility barriers like this one from their website and discuss more effective ways to foster digital inclusiveness.
Unsurprisingly, the sales rep got in touch with me right away, and we had an animated discussion about sales techniques and how overlays do not mitigate legal risk. I asked the rep why they didn’t use more above-board approaches like the moral, user interface, and business cases for accessibility to sell their services. The rep replied that these techniques were far less effective than approaching accessibility from the legal perspective. In short, the stick worked better than the carrot for them to sell their solution.
At the end of our conversation, neither of our minds had changed, and the rep and I agreed to disagree. Yet this discussion caused me to start thinking about whether the legal approach to accessibility advocacy was as undesirable as I made it out to be. Yes, I would much rather use nobler arguments to convince people to invest in digital accessibility, but I had also seen organizations make significant changes to their websites after receiving a demand letter. Accessibility laws are there for a reason, and if other factors don’t motivate organizations to remove accessibility barriers, perhaps the legal perspective might be useful, though not as an agent of fear or intimidation. If a company knows the legal risk and still doesn’t prioritize accessibility, that’s their decision to make, and their consequences to assume.
In the end, I decided to trade up my accessibility advocacy spectrum for something more nuanced.
Overlapping and connected approaches
The accessibility advocacy spectrum implies that only one approach can be used at a time in any situation. This is not the case. As the hero image at the beginning of this article illustrates, effective accessibility advocacy lies where the various approaches overlap. Using multiple perspectives to make the case for accessibility can have a cumulative effect that isn’t there when just “banging the drum” of a single argument. If one line of reasoning doesn’t resonate with a stakeholder, another might. Combining several approaches (even the legal case), creates a stronger overall argument for investing in accessibility.
In addition, the different advocacy approaches outlined in this post complement and connect with each other. This further fortifies the foundational assertion that digital accessibility is an essential and worthwhile investment.
Specific connections between each pair of advocacy approaches are enumerated in the following diagram and table.
Connections between accessibility advocacy approaches
| Approach 1 | Approach 2 | Connection | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moral / Ethical | User Experience | Engagement | When inclusive user experiences satisfy the moral imperative for accessibility, it fosters engagement from people with disabilities. |
| User Experience | Business | Conversion | When businesses implement accessible experiences, they build intense brand loyalty with their disabled users leading to increased conversions. |
| Business | Legal | Compliance | The legal mandate for accessibility necessitates business compliance with digital accessibility laws. |
| Legal | Moral / Ethical | Enforcement | Enforcement of legal accessibility imperatives fulfills the moral and ethical obligation of inclusion. |
| Moral / Ethical | Business | Reputation | Businesses that take initiative to meet the moral responsibility of accessibility gain a good reputation with the disability community for inclusive products and services. |
| User Experience | Legal | Standards | Accessibility laws are based on standards such as the WCAG that define elements of accessible user interfaces. |
Conclusion
I still don’t believe that leading with the legal argument for accessibility is the best approach. It is confrontational and I think it fosters an unnecessarily adversarial tone in conversations with potential clients. Even so, I’m realizing that the legal perspective is still valid and has its rightful place in the advocacy tool belt. The connections between advocacy approaches strengthen the overall case for accessibility, making each approach more convincing than if it was presented on its own.