Accessibility is only going to get bigger

Introduction

Digital accessibility has always been important. In and around 2002, when Macromedia Flash was a thing, I chose to focus one of my Foundation Degree projects on how I could make a Flash website, accessible. It was probably dog shit. Yet, I believed it was possible to create a website which was aesthetically pleasing, usable and accessible.

Given, it was one of the first websites that I created, it was probably none of these things. Yet, I was aware of accessibility and had tried to create something of a decent quality. Two factors that are key, in elevating accessibility standards.

23 years on and the internet is still a shit show. In Webaim's 2024 accessibility survey, of the top 1,000,000 homepages, 95.9% 'had detected WCAG 2 failures'. This was barely any better than 5 years previous. These were also only programmatically detectable errors, using the 'WAVE accessibility engine', which only account for a subset of potential issues.

Yet, the need for accessibility is only set to increase.

An ageing population

• In 2021, 18.6% of the total UK population were aged 65 years or older, compared to 16.4% in 2011.
• The proportion of people with a disability in the 65+ age bracket is around 45%.
• Around 1 in 4 adults in the UK are over 65.
• The over 70s are the UK's second most online age bracket, after people in their twenties
• In 2013, 61% of 65-74 year olds had used the internet within the last 3 months. It's now ~90%.

As the average age of people in the UK is increasing and because the older we are, the more likely we are to have a disability, the proportion of people using digital services who have accessibility needs, is increasing.

Users are not the problem

As Hassell Inclusion recently pointed out, the IBM personal computer came out in 1981. A graduate who was 22 in 1981 will now be in their mid sixties. The issue is not the capabilities of the end user, it's your digital service.

The more people who can use your service, the more potential customers, you may have.

User centered design, is vital in creating usable and pleasurable experiences that outlast competitors.

Laws and legislation

Perhaps due to a higher proportion of people with disabilities, cost-cutting exercises to shift services to digital, or growing expectations for digital-first experiences, stricter laws and legislation are being introduced.

In the UK, the public sector must meet more stringent accessibility standards, while the EU has rolled out the European Accessibility Act. Private-sector legislation is also tightening to improve accessibility practices.

In the USA, law suits around accessibility have increased, each year, for the past 5 years.

It is plausible that this pattern is only going to increase, as people experiencing digital accessibility issues increases.

Search engine algorithms

Whether AI takes over search engines, is yet to be seen. However, it's plausible, that what is good for a search engine, may also be easier to decipher, for an AI model. Search engines factor the accessibility of websites into their rankings. Whist we know that automated checks can only account for a subset of issues, it is plausible that models will become more sophisticated, to be able to account for a larger set of potential issues.

Whilst search engines remain, it is always a possibility that they may further penalise websites which aren't accessible, in order to improve the quality of their results.

Opportunities and risks

Putting ethics aside, the benefits of accessibility always fall into the bucket of opportunity or the firey death pit of risk.

Whilst the importance of accessibility seems likely to only ever increase, the opportunities and risks are likely to be heightened, over time.

Conclusion

As the UK population ages and the prevalence of disabilities remains high, adopting inclusive design principles is essential. By ensuring that digital products are accessible, businesses not only comply with legal standards but also tap into a significant and growing market segment.

Sources: Age UK, Hassell Inclusion, BBC, The Guardian