Accessibility is no longer a compliance checkbox. It is a growth lever. When brands remove barriers for people with disabilities, they unlock new demand, improve SEO and reduce friction that suppresses conversions. The scale is not small. The World Health Organization notes that about 1.3 billion people, or 16 percent of the global population, live with a significant disability, which means accessibility touches almost every category and market segment. According to the WHO overview on disability, that number is growing as populations age and chronic conditions rise.

The business case is stronger than ever

Even among top sites, accessibility gaps remain broad. The WebAIM Million analysis for 2024 reports that 95.9 percent of home pages had detectable WCAG failures, with an average of 56.8 errors per page, and the most common issues include low contrast text, missing alt text, and unlabeled form inputs. This is a competitive opening. If your site is easier to perceive, understand, and navigate, you win the audience your competitors are unintentionally pushing away.

There is also risk avoidance. The 2024 year end report from UsableNet indicates that more than 4,000 ADA lawsuits related to digital properties were filed in 2024 across federal and state courts. Investing early in inclusive UX lowers legal exposure while improving customer experience.

Finally, accessibility expands market opportunity. In the UK, the spending power of disabled people and their households, known as the Purple Pound, is estimated at 274 billion pounds annually, as outlined in Scope’s guidance for businesses. When you improve access, you grow revenue by design.

Flintler’s approach to inclusive growth

At Flintler, we build accessibility into our 5 phase creative process, from Discovery and Strategy through Design, Refinement, and Launch. You can see how this strategy translates into outcomes in our UX and product redesign case studies, such as the UX audit to prototype journey described in our product redesign case study, as well as in our work highlights for Vela, Lume, Nexa, and Forma. For a deeper dive into our method, review the 5 phase brand build from discovery to launch on our blog.

Practical UX tactics that lift conversions

Modern accessibility is guided by WCAG 2.2. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative explains what is new in WCAG 2.2, including added criteria like focus appearance, dragging movements, and target size minimums. In practice, several improvements deliver immediate wins for both accessibility and conversion:

• Color contrast and typography. WebAIM shows low contrast text appears on 81 percent of pages they tested. Use sufficient contrast ratios and a readable type scale to reduce cognitive load and bounce.

• Keyboard navigation and focus. According to the W3C understanding docs for Focus Visible and Focus Appearance, users must see where focus is and move through interfaces without a mouse. Ensure clear focus outlines, logical tab order, and skip links.

• Forms that succeed on the first try. The W3C labeling controls tutorial details how explicit labels, descriptive help text, and clear error messaging improve form completion. These same patterns reduce checkout friction, which aligns with longstanding findings in Baymard Institute’s checkout research that robust labeling, clear validation, and error prevention reduce abandonment.

If you are developing or redesigning an ecommerce store, Shopify gives merchants practical guidance. Shopify’s accessibility best practices for themes outline contrast, alt text, focus indicators, slideshow controls, and more. For new builds, we recommend launching on Shopify, which we also use in our own ecommerce projects, since it streamlines a11y friendly patterns and supports continuous iteration.

Content and UX writing that everyone can use

Accessibility is about how you say things, not just how you code them. Nielsen Norman Group emphasizes that plain language benefits experts and non experts alike, and that users scan and prefer concise, scannable content. To raise comprehension and conversions:

• Use plain language, short sentences, and descriptive headings to guide scanning.

• Write descriptive link text instead of generic phrases like “click here.” WebAIM’s guidance on link text shows how descriptive anchors benefit screen readers and SEO.

• Provide image alt text. Google’s Image SEO best practices recommend alt text that is useful, information rich, and contextual. Google’s technical writing guidance on writing helpful alt text is also a clear reference for teams.

• Structure content semantically. Clear heading hierarchy and landmarks make navigation faster for screen reader users and improve crawlability for search engines.

These patterns reduce cognitive overhead and increase task completion for everyone.

Social media accessibility that grows reach

Accessible social content increases watch time, shares, and engagement. Verizon Media and Publicis found that 69 percent of consumers view video with the sound off in public spaces and that 80 percent are more likely to watch an entire video if captions are available. Facebook’s business team also reported that captioned video ads increase view time by about 12 percent on average in their internal tests. Practical steps on major platforms are straightforward:

• Add alt text. The Instagram Help Center explains how to add alt text to posts. The X Help Center shows how to add image descriptions with the ALT button. LinkedIn’s help article details how to add alternative text to images in posts.

• Caption every video. YouTube’s help docs show how to add subtitles and use automatic captioning, and Google’s video SEO best practices note that structured video data and accessible video assets increase the chance of appearance in search results.

• Use CamelCase in hashtags, avoid ASCII art and decorative text, and keep emojis to the end of sentences. These practices help screen reader parsing.

For brand campaigns and UGC programs, repeatable accessibility guardrails protect performance and reputation at scale. See how we scale social proof engines in our guide to building an influencer to UGC engine that scales on the Flintler blog.

Measurement and momentum

Treat accessibility as continuous optimization. Set up a quality routine that includes automated tests for regressions, manual keyboard checks, and screen reader spot checks on critical user journeys. Track the impact with conversion analytics and cohort analysis. When we align product experience and brand storytelling, performance follows, which we discuss in our post on product led branding and in our SaaS UX, UI, and content architecture blueprint that converts.

If you are launching a new brand or planning a redesign, Flintler’s 90 day brand launch roadmap for startups and our rebrand case study powered by the 5 phase creative process detail how to sequence research, strategy, and build for speed without sacrificing accessibility.

Accessibility is ultimately brand building. It signals respect, reduces friction, and compounds results over time. If you are ready to make inclusion your competitive advantage, explore our work, learn more about us, or start a conversation with our team via contact. You can also browse more insights on the Flintler blog and see related reads like our custom website vs no code guide that covers TCO, SEO, and conversion trade offs and our social growth analytics blueprint that proves ROI.

Resources cited in this article include the WebAIM Million 2024 analysis of the top 1,000,000 home pages, W3C WAI’s overview of what is new in WCAG 2.2, WHO’s disability facts, UsableNet’s 2024 report on digital accessibility lawsuits, Google’s guidance on alt text and video best practices, Instagram’s alt text help, X’s image description guide, LinkedIn’s alt text help, and Verizon Media and Facebook resources on captioning and engagement.