Anyone who has worked in digital accessibility will be familiar with these common excuses: its not a priority for us now, we'll get to it later, we don't have disabled customers.
None of these are good excuses and I used to leave these exchanges frustrated that I hadn't been able to make them care. These days I have a more considered response.
While I would love everyone to care just because it is the right thing, that is just not the world we live in. However, I am an inherent optimist so that hasn’t stopped me trying. Instead, I’ve realised its just about finding the right language to make someone care. How can we sell the case for accessibility in language they understand?
Enter stage left: the CARE framework.
C is for Compliance
For some people, the most compelling argument is the legal one, and there is nothing wrong with that. The regulatory landscape around digital accessibility has teeth and they are getting sharper.
In the UK, inaccessible digital services can constitute a breach of the Equality Act, while public sector organisations face specific obligations around their websites and apps that are actively monitored and enforced.
For any organisation selling products or services to EU customers, the European Accessibility Act, which came into force in June 2025, now extends those requirements into the private sector for the first time, with each member state setting its own penalties for non-compliance. Those penalties can include enforcement notices, restricted market access, corrective orders, and financial penalties, and with over 5,000 ADA lawsuits filed in the US in 2025 alone, the direction of travel is clear.
Organisations that treat accessibility as someone else’s problem are increasingly finding that the cost of inaction outweighs the cost of getting it right, and the question to put to any risk-averse stakeholder is a simple one: would you rather fix it now or pay the fine later?
A is for Altruism
For those pockets of people who are motivated by fairness rather than fear, the altruist angle tends to be more persuasive. For many, digital accessibility is deprioritised not through active intent but through ignorance.
Every week I hear similar anecdotes: only when their friend/ colleague/ spouse/ parent experienced barriers did they realise the problem of inaccessibility.
For people who haven’t had the exposure a useful way to frame it is this: if the digital world were a building and the only entrance had steps, would you build a ramp? Almost everyone says yes to that without hesitation. The digital equivalent is exactly the same question, and yet the answer organisations give with their budgets is frequently no.
Accessibility empowers independence and shapes how people manage their finances, access healthcare, connect with services, and live their lives, which makes it a basic human right, not a nice-to-have.
R is for Return on Investment
Accessibility numbers are big and, once flagged up, hard to ignore.
The combined spending power of households with at least one disabled person is now estimated at £446 billion per year to the UK economy, based on the most recent data available, an increase of nearly 30% in real terms since 2015, and a considerable revision upward from the £274 billion figure that has been widely cited until now. That is not a niche audience; it is a substantial and growing portion of the UK economy.
Yet, research from the Click-Away Pound survey found that around 69% of disabled users will simply leave a website they find difficult to use, a loss of £17 billion to the UK economy. Most businesses are entirely unaware they are losing this revenue because only around 8% of disabled customers who struggle with a site will contact the site owner.
On the cost side, there is a persistent myth that accessibility is expensive, and it can be but usually because organisations leave it too late.
Organisations that build accessibility in from the start spend approximately 67% less on accessibility compliance than those who retrofit it after launch. Retrofitting accessibility into an existing site typically costs 10 to 30% more than building it in from the beginning.
The accessibility debt that accumulates when this work is deferred does not disappear; it compounds, and by the time a legal challenge or a product overhaul forces the issue, the cost of fixing it is a fraction of what it might have been had someone made the case earlier.
Spend early, spend less and make more. There is a clear ROI case for accessibility that businesses ignore at their peril.
E is for Experience
The final angle is perhaps the most powerful of all. Accessibility is not just for people who currently identify as disabled. Features designed for people with disabilities frequently end up improving the experience for everyone. This is the well known curb cut effect, named after the dropped kerbs that were originally designed for wheelchair users and turned out to make life considerably easier for people with pushchairs, cyclists, delivery drivers, and anyone navigating the pavement with their hands full.
The digital equivalents are everywhere: captions were designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing users and are now used by millions of people watching video on their lunch break with the sound off; clear navigation and plain language are accessibility considerations that improve the experience for every single user, regardless of whether they have a diagnosed condition.
The other thing worth saying here is that disability is not always permanent and not always visible. It can be a broken wrist, a migraine, a noisy environment, a period of profound grief that makes concentration impossible, or simply the accumulated reality of getting older.
If you have ever struggled to read small print, lost your glasses, or found yourself trying to complete an online form while holding a baby, you have had a taste of what poor accessibility feels like and one day, most of us will need it rather more than that.
Everyone CAREs, eventually
The CARE framework is not really about finding the single most persuasive argument and deploying it universally. It is about recognising that different people are motivated by different things, and that the job of anyone who works in this space is to find the right language for the person in front of them. Some people need the legal case, some need the moral one, some need to see the revenue they are quietly losing, and some need to experience the barriers first-hand before it clicks into place.
What they all have in common is that, once framed correctly, accessibility stops being an afterthought and starts being the obvious, commercially and ethically sound thing to do (which, btw, it always was!).
References
- University of Bristol / Money Advice Trust — Help! (second edition): disabled consumers and people in vulnerable situations, November 2025. Purple Pound updated to £446 billion for 2023/24.
- AbilityNet / Click-Away Pound Survey 2019 — 69% of disabled users click away from inaccessible websites; only 8% contact the site owner; £17.1 billion in lost UK online retail revenue.
- Level Access — The Curb Cut Effect: How Digital Accessibility Elevates UX for Everyone. Features designed for disabled people frequently improve the experience for everyone.
- AbilityNet — European Accessibility Act (EAA). The EAA became law across EU member states on 28 June 2025 and applies to UK businesses selling into the EU.
- AudioEye — European Accessibility Act: What It Is, Who It Covers, and How to Comply. EAA penalties include enforcement notices, restricted market access, corrective orders, and financial penalties.
- AudioEye / TestParty — EAA Compliance Guide. Unlike PSBAR, the EAA extends requirements to private sector organisations for the first time.
- Recite Me — Web Accessibility Legislation in the UK. PSBAR requires public sector websites to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA and publish an accessibility statement.
- TestParty — 15 Digital Accessibility Statistics That Prove ROI in 2025. Organisations building accessibility in from the start spend approximately 67% less than those who retrofit.
- 2HatsLogic — The Cost of Ignoring Accessibility. Retrofitting accessibility typically costs 10–30% more than building it in from the beginning.