There Are Only Two Ways to Find Out Whether Your online shop Is Accessible
1. Wait until you get sued.
2. Ask a professional to evaluate it.
Most businesses choose a third option: they think everything is fine. Unfortunately, that assumption can be expensive.
As a blind accessibility consultant, I regularly encounter barriers that prevent me from completing everyday online tasks. Recently, I was unable to open a bank account because the registration form was inaccessible. I could not book a flight because the date picker didn’t work with screen readers. I could not purchase a product I wanted, because the checkout process was not designed for blind users or people with motor disabilities.
Each of those businesses lost at least 1 customer.
Now close your eyes for a moment and ask yourself
How would you feel if you couldn’t complete a simple task online? How would you feel if your child faced the same obstacle?
For millions of people with disabilities, barriers like these are part of daily life.
For businesses, they often represent missed opportunities.
The Market Most Companies Overlook
Accessibility barriers remain common across ecommerce websites.
Many decision-makers still underestimate the purchasing power of people with disabilities or assume accessibility has little impact on business performance.
People with disabilities shop online nearly twice as often as the general population. For many of them leaving the home is not that easy, so they decide to buy through ecommerce.
One of the best-known examples comes from Tesco, the UK’s leading supermarket chain. The company invested approximately £35,000 in accessibility improvements and reported an additional £13 million in annual revenue. Those numbers become easier to understand when viewed through actual customer behavior.
A true story that explains everything
My website hosting provider once offered me a personalized email service for $20 per year. I gladly purchased it. Shortly afterward, I discovered that the service was inaccessible. As a result, I switched to a fully accessible alternative that cost me $93.60 annually.
Many people with disabilities invest significant time finding products and services they can use independently. When they find an accessible solution, they are often more likely to remain customers and recommend it to others.
Accessibility Alone Is Not Enough
Making your online store disability friendly is only the beginning. If you want to see the full business benefit, potential customers need to know accessibility matters to your organization. Here is what to do:
- Launch a PR campaign focused on your accessibility initiatives.
- Create and share accessibility statement on social media.
- Promote your products or services within disability communities and online groups.
- Feature people with disabilities using your products and services.
Accessibility should become part of your overall marketing strategy rather than a one-time technical project. Organizations often report improvements in brand perception, customer loyalty, and audience reach after investing in accessibility.
Should You Build Internal Expertise or Hire Consultants?
Many companies assume their developers already understand accessibility. In reality, accessibility is a specialized discipline. Recently, I spoke with the CEO of a mid-sized company who confidently told me:
“Our developers already know accessibility. We are accessible by default.”
Within minutes, I demonstrated an accessibility issue that prevented me from doing a critical task on the website. If accessibility barriers prevent users from completing transactions, there is still work to be done.
Most development teams are highly skilled at building products. Accessibility, however, is rarely a major part of formal software development education. This is why many organizations benefit from external expertise, especially at the beginning of their accessibility journey. Consultants help teams identify issues faster, avoid costly mistakes, and transfer knowledge to internal staff.
Another option is hiring agencies that provide complete remediation services. While this can be effective, it often leaves internal teams without a deeper understanding of accessibility principles.
A more sustainable approach is collaboration: consultants identify issues, developers implement solutions, and accessibility knowledge gradually becomes part of the organization’s internal expertise.
The Accessibility Issues I See Most Often
Over the course of auditing hundreds of ecommerce pages, I have noticed the same issues appearing repeatedly:
- Auto-rotating carousels
- Product prices embedded inside images
- Unlabeled checkout buttons
- Inaccessible form fields
- Low color contrast
- Poor keyboard navigation
These issues may appear minor, but they cause losses that most businesses neglect.
Accessibility Is a Journey, Not a Destination
Accessibility is not something you achieve once and forget about. It requires continuous attention, periodic testing, and a commitment to inclusive design as products evolve. The good news is that accessibility becomes easier once teams understand the principles behind it. Getting started is often the biggest challenge. The sooner accessibility becomes part of your development process, the sooner more customers can successfully use your products and services.