| name | why-accessibility |
| description | A skill that helps developers and teams understand and justify the importance of accessibility to stakeholders, providing ethical, legal, and business arguments tailored to their context. |
Understand the context
Before making the case, ask the user for context if not already provided:
- Who is the audience? (themselves, engineering manager, product manager, C-suite, client, investors)
- What type of app is it? (consumer, enterprise, government, health, finance)
- What country or market is the app targeting?
- Is there a specific objection to address? (cost, priority, timeline)
Tailor the arguments below to the audience and context.
Arguments for accessibility
1. Legal and compliance risk
Accessibility is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions, not an optional feature.
- USA: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been interpreted to cover mobile apps and websites. Lawsuits against companies for inaccessible digital products have grown significantly — over 4,000 ADA digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in 2023 alone.
- EU / France: The European Accessibility Act (EAA) mandates that apps in key sectors (e-commerce, banking, transport, media) must be accessible by June 2025 — this covers nearly all types of clients. In France, failure to comply may result in a total penalty of up to €75,000 from the ARCOM, renewable every 6 months.
- UK: The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments to avoid discrimination against disabled users.
- Canada: The Accessible Canada Act (ACA) and provincial laws apply to federally regulated organizations.
- Australia: The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) covers digital services.
- Government / public sector: WCAG 2.1 AA compliance is mandatory in most countries for public sector digital services.
- Internal apps are not exempt: Enterprise apps used by employees are subject to the same legal obligations — disability is common in the workplace and often invisible. It even more important to make internal tools accessible, as it can leads to hiring discrimination.
Precisions for EU and France
The European Accessibility Act (EAA) applies to products and services in the following sectors:
- Your app/website provides one of these services: electronic communication services (messaging, email, etc.), audiovisual media services (television, radio, streaming, etc.), transportation services, banking services, or online commerce services are affected.
- Your client is a Large Company, i.e. with an annual revenue of over €250 million in France
- Your client is part of the Public Service: a company that performs public service missions, or a public body directly.
French penalties in detail
| Who | Violation | Max penalty |
|---|
| Large Companies & Public Services | Breach of transparency obligations (missing accessibility declaration, etc.) | €25,000 |
| Public Services only | Non-compliance (100% accessibility not reached) | +€50,000 |
| Service applications | 5th class fine | €7,500 |
The ARCOM can impose up to €75,000 in total (€25,000 + €50,000 for public services), renewable every 6 months.
Key message: "Not investing in accessibility now creates legal liability that will cost far more to fix under pressure — or in court."
2. Market size and revenue opportunity
Disability is not a minority edge case.
- 1.3 billion people worldwide live with some form of disability (WHO, 2023) — about 16% of the global population.
- Situational disabilities multiply this number: a parent holding a baby, someone in bright sunlight, a user with a broken arm — all benefit from accessible design.
- Older users (a growing demographic) often experience age-related accessibility needs (vision, hearing, motor).
- Many disabilities are invisible — they are not always obvious at a glance, which means the real affected population is larger than it appears.
Source: https://www.who.int/health-topics/disability#tab=tab_1
France-specific statistics
When targeting the French market, these numbers make the case concrete:
| Disability | People affected |
|---|
| Visual impairment | 2 million |
| Hearing impairment | 5.4 million |
| Color blindness | 3.3 million |
| Dyslexia | 6.6 million |
| Motor disability | 2.3 million |
| Intellectual / mental | 5–6 million |
1 in 3 people in France has some form of disability — it affects every sector and every profession.
Key message: "We are voluntarily excluding a market segment the size of China's population."
3. Improved experience for all users (curb-cut effect)
Accessibility is broader than disability — it is part of the overall quality of a product and affects all users.
- Font scaling not supported → problems for older users, or jobs where the phone is held at arm's length (e.g. delivery cyclists).
- No captions on a video → impossible to follow in a public space (metro, train) without headphones.
- Low contrast → text is harder to read in general, and impossible outdoors in direct sunlight.
- Keyboard navigation speeds up power users.
- Clear labels and readable fonts reduce cognitive load for everyone.
- Screen reader support also improves SEO (semantic structure, alt text, labels).
Key message: "Every accessibility fix makes the product better for all users."
4. Code quality and testability
Accessible apps are easier to test — and this is a concrete engineering benefit.
- The semantic properties used by screen readers (labels, roles, states) are the same properties used by testing frameworks (Espresso, XCTest, Flutter's
find.bySemanticsLabel, React Native Testing Library, Maestro from integration tests).
- Writing accessible code enforces clear, meaningful component structure — which is easier to maintain, review, and onboard new developers into.
- Catching accessibility issues early is cheaper than fixing them in QA or after release.
Key message: "Accessible code is better code. The same investment that helps screen reader users also improves your test coverage."
6. Cost of fixing it later
Accessibility is significantly cheaper when built in from the start.
- Retrofitting accessibility into an existing product costs 10x more than building it in from the beginning (referenced in WebAIM and Deque studies).
- The longer inaccessible code accumulates, the more components need to be refactored.
- User complaints, negative reviews, and viral posts about exclusion create reputational damage that is hard to quantify but very real.
Key message: "The question is not whether we pay for accessibility — it's whether we pay now or later, with interest."
7. Ethical responsibility and brand reputation
- Companies that publicly commit to inclusion attract talent, customers, and investors who share those values.
- Inaccessible products send a message: "We didn't think about you." For users with disabilities, that message lands hard.
- High-profile accessibility failures have led to public backlash and costly litigation. Notable cases: Domino's Pizza was sued for an inaccessible app and settled after 6 years (Robles v. Domino's, 2022); Beyoncé's website was hit with a class action for lacking alt-text and keyboard navigation (BuzzFeed News, 2019).
- Accessibility is increasingly part of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) criteria used by investors.
— W3C Business Case)
Key message: "Accessibility is a reflection of who we are as a company. It signals whether we build for people or just for the median user."
8. Competitive differentiation
- Many competitors neglect accessibility. Being the most accessible option in a market is a genuine differentiator, especially in enterprise sales where procurement teams evaluate compliance.
- Enterprises and governments require VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessibility Template / Accessibility Conformance Report) documentation from vendors — without it, the procurement may not proceed. In the US, Section 508 explicitly states: "it is not voluntary to complete an ACR if you wish the government to consider purchasing your product." (Section508.gov)
Key message: "In B2B, lack of accessibility disqualifies us from procurement. In B2C, it's a differentiator almost no competitor has invested in."
Common misconceptions to address
- "Accessibility only matters for severe disabilities (blind, paralyzed...)" — In reality, 1 in 3 people is affected in some way. Dyslexia, color blindness, motor difficulty, age-related vision loss — these are all accessibility concerns.
- "Accessibility only concerns people with disabilities" — Situational and temporary impairments (broken arm, noisy environment, bright sunlight) affect everyone. Accessibility is a quality concern for all users.
- "Our app is internal, so it doesn't apply to us" — Employees have disabilities too, often invisible ones. Internal apps are legally subject to the same requirements.
- "We'll add it later" — Retrofitting costs 10x more. Accessibility needs to be in design from day one.
How to present the case
- To yourself: Give an overview of all arguments and ask if they need more details on any.
- To engineers: Frame it as technical debt with compounding interest. The longer it waits, the harder the refactor.
- To product managers: Lead with user impact, then market size. Frame accessibility tickets as revenue protection and feature flags for a new user segment.
- To executives / investors: Lead with legal risk and market size. Quantify the addressable market and reference recent litigation in the company's industry.
- To clients: Reference legal obligations in their market and the reputational risk. Offer to include a WCAG audit as part of the deliverable.
Useful references to share
