Web accessibility isn't a nice-to-have. It's a fundamental requirement for any product that serves the public. One in six people globally — 1.3 billion — live with a significant disability. That includes people who are blind, deaf, have motor impairments, cognitive disabilities, or temporary conditions like a broken arm.
When your website isn't accessible, you're not just failing a compliance checkbox. You're actively preventing real people from using your product, buying your services, or accessing information they need.
The business case
Beyond ethics, the numbers are stark. The disposable income of people with disabilities is estimated at $1.2 trillion annually in the US alone. Inaccessible websites lose customers — and increasingly, face lawsuits. Over 4,000 ADA web accessibility lawsuits were filed in the US in 2023, up from just 814 in 2017.
Companies like Domino's, Beyoncé's Parkwood Entertainment, and Nike have all faced high-profile accessibility lawsuits. The legal landscape is clear: if your website is inaccessible, you're a target.
What makes a website accessible?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 define four principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. In practice, this means things like providing alt text for images so screen readers can describe them, ensuring sufficient color contrast so text is readable, making all functionality available via keyboard for people who can't use a mouse, and using proper heading hierarchy so screen readers can navigate the page structure.
Most accessibility issues are straightforward to fix — they're just easy to overlook if you're not testing for them. That's why automated scanning tools like xsbl exist: to catch the issues your team might miss before they become problems.
Getting started
The best time to start caring about accessibility was when you built your website. The second best time is now. Start with an automated scan to understand your baseline, fix the critical and serious issues first, and build accessibility checks into your development workflow so new issues don't slip through.