Digital accessibility is more than just a tickbox in a brief; it can be the deciding factor in whether your site is successful, or not.
Accessibility is often viewed as an extra or a small token part of a brief – something you add once a website is designed, built, and signed off. A compliance step. A safeguard. A “we’ll get to it later” task. But that misses the point. Accessibility isn’t an enhancement to a digital product – it’s part of whether the product works at all. And when it’s built in from the start, rather than bolted on at the end, it leads to clearer decisions, stronger foundations, and a product that’s more likely to meet its goals without costly rework later on.
Accessibility is about usability, not compliance
When clients hear “accessibility”, they’re often thinking about guidelines, audits, or legal risk. Those things matter, but they’re not the heart of the issue. Accessibility is about whether real people can use your website or platform without friction, confusion, or exclusion. If someone can’t navigate your site, read your content, or complete a task because of how it’s been designed or built, that’s not an edge case – it’s a failure of usability.
Seen this way, accessibility stops being a technical requirement and becomes a quality measure. A site that works for more people, in more situations, is simply a better site.
When accessibility is an add-on, the cracks show
Treating accessibility as something to “add later” almost always leads to compromises. Colour contrast gets tweaked instead of rethought. Navigation is patched rather than simplified. Content is technically compliant but still hard to understand. These fixes cost more time and money because they’re fighting decisions that were already made without accessibility in mind.
When accessibility is a core objective from the start, it influences the right things early – structure, clarity, interaction, and flow. That leads to calmer interfaces, clearer messaging, and fewer assumptions about how users behave. The work becomes more resilient, not more constrained.
Your users are more varied than you think
Accessibility isn’t about designing for a small, separate group of people. It’s about acknowledging how people actually use the web. Users may have permanent disabilities, temporary injuries, ageing eyesight, cognitive fatigue, poor connectivity, or simply be using a device one-handed on a bad day. Often, it’s a combination.
Designing with accessibility in mind means designing for this reality. It means recognising that your audience is wider, more variable, and less predictable than a persona document can ever capture. Products that respect this tend to perform better across the board – not just for accessibility metrics, but for engagement, conversion, and trust.
Accessibility is a signal of intent
For clients, the real question isn’t “do we need accessibility?” – it’s “what does our product say about us if we ignore it?” Accessibility signals care, competence, and long-term thinking. It shows that a platform has been designed with responsibility, not just speed or aesthetics, in mind.
The strongest digital work doesn’t announce its accessibility. It feels straightforward, usable, and considerate. That only happens when accessibility is treated as a key objective – not an optional extra, and not something bolted on once the decisions are already locked in.
