Why Accessibility Has to Be a Priority for Your Business

If there is one thing that every single business needs to succeed, it’s a strong inclusion and accessibility mission. We make our digital experiences as accessible as possible for our employees, but we should also be making physical accessibility in the office a priority, too. 

From ensuring that you make lift repairs a priority when things break down to having a budget for adding ramps, you need to work closely with your team to ensure that you are meeting expectations of your team and that means knowing why you should prioritize accessibility in the first place. If you are going to start a new project, then you need to ensure that you are paying attention. You will find it much easier to make fixes later than you would than following guidelines and possibly getting it entirely wrong. So, why is accessibility a priority you need to consider for your business?

Image source: Pexels

1. For legal reasons. If you are hiring this year and you don’t have an accessibility and inclusion policy in your business, then you need to get started with finding one. You need to ensure that you are not going to be legally open to being prosecuted if you are excluding an entire portion of the population and the best way to do that is make sure that you have the right policies in place.
2. To protect your reputation. You want to make sure that you go beyond the legal ramifications of not having a policy for accessibility in place. When you do this, you protect your reputation. Do you want people to consider your business the one that doesn’t include disabled folk? Probably not!
3. Inclusivity matters. Accessibility has to be a priority for your business and inclusivity is such an important reason for that. You need to make sure that every user has access to all areas of the website and your office. You cannot exclude those in wheelchairs because there are always ways around doing that. If your business building doesn’t have a lift, then adding a chair lift to the stairwell will help. You could also move your office to a ground floor location. There are ways and means to ensure that inclusivity is what matters most. 
4. Experience. You want people who come to your business to have the best possible experience and the only way to do that is to ensure that you are being accessible and inclusive in what you’re doing. Where you focus on user experience, you’ll be able to ensure that you are treating all your users completely equally no matter what. 
5. Standards. Your business has to have standards if it wants to be taken seriously in your arena. You need your business to be a force of nature in your field and that means understanding how accessibility affects how clients view you and how employees and candidates feel about you business. If you don’t pay attention to that, you’re not going to have the right response.