Does digital accessibility actually drive business growth? 58% of business leaders say yes

Does digital accessibility actually drive business growth? 58% of business leaders say yes 

Every business leader wants better conversions and a stronger customer experience. Not many have looked at digital accessibility as the lever for both.

For years, digital accessibility, designing websites that work for people with disabilities, was treated as a legal problem, not a business one. But according to AudioEye’s 2026 Accessibility Advantage Report, which surveyed more than 400 C-suite executives, VPs, and directors, that framing is changing fast. When asked directly whether digital accessibility drives real business impact, 58% of business leaders said yes, calling it a growth opportunity rather than a compliance cost. Sixty-one percent believe it gives their brand a competitive edge.

The companies acting on that belief are starting to see it in their numbers. Below, AudioEye explains why the ones still waiting may be losing more than they realize.

A problem hiding in plain sight

To understand why accessibility has become a business issue worth paying attention to, it helps to understand what “inaccessible” actually means in practice.

For people who rely on assistive technology, this can mean a product page that a screen reader cannot interpret. A checkout flow that breaks for someone navigating by keyboard. A form that cannot be completed without a mouse.

According to AudioEye’s 2025 Digital Accessibility Report, the average web page contains 297 accessibility issues. Roughly one in four American adults lives with some form of disability, and this audience is often one of the most underserved consumer segments in digital commerce. According to the Return on Disability Group, the broader disability community, including family members and caregivers, controls an estimated $18 trillion in purchasing power globally.

People with disabilities are often highly loyal to the brands that earn their trust. When a website fails them, it could end the relationship before it starts, giving them a reason to leave and not come back.

What happens when companies invest

The organizations treating accessibility as a customer experience investment are reporting real returns across every major dimension of digital performance, including:

1. Website traffic and conversion. According to AudioEye’s research, 42% of business leaders report increased website traffic after improving accessibility. The connection is direct: Accessible design means cleaner page structure, more descriptive content, and fewer dead ends for users. All of which reduce friction in the buying journey and keep more customers moving toward conversion. Sixty-two percent of leaders also believe customers have abandoned purchases on their site because of accessibility issues, meaning the upside of fixing those barriers is already built in.

2. User experience. Thirty-five percent say accessibility improvements made their site easier to navigate for all users, not just those with disabilities. Captions help people watching videos on mute. High-contrast text is easier to read on a phone in bright sunlight. Keyboard-friendly navigation benefits anyone who prefers efficiency over clicking. Accessibility improvements do not serve one audience at the expense of another; they make the overall experience better.

3. SEO and discoverability. Many accessibility best practices overlap directly with what search engines reward. Clean page structure, descriptive image text, logical navigation, and meaningful link labels all contribute to how well a site gets indexed and ranked. As AI-powered search becomes a bigger driver of web traffic, well-structured and accessible content is also more likely to be surfaced and summarized accurately, making accessibility an investment in future discoverability, not just today’s rankings.

4. Brand reputation. Sixty-one percent of business leaders say accessibility strengthens their brand’s competitive position. Consumers, especially younger ones, increasingly pay attention to which companies demonstrate a genuine commitment to building products that work for everyone. As more brands make accessibility a visible part of their digital strategy, the reputational gap between leaders and laggards is becoming harder to close.

Why many companies are still behind

Most organizations genuinely want to do better. The challenge is structural. AudioEye’s report identifies a pattern it calls the “Yet” problem:

• 52% of leaders say they actively champion accessibility, yet 58% cite low budgets as a barrier.
• 44% manage accessibility entirely in-house, yet 64% of those admit their teams lack the expertise to do it consistently.
• 62% believe customers have left because of accessibility issues, yet 50% say uncertainty around ROI is holding back further investment.

The core issue is that accessibility gets treated like a project with a finish line rather than an ongoing practice that has to be built into everyday work. Websites change constantly, and a site that passes an audit today can accumulate hundreds of new issues within months as new pages, features, and content are added. Without systems to monitor and address those changes continuously, even well-intentioned programs stall, and the business impact quietly goes unrealized.

The mindset that separates the leaders

The organizations making the most measurable progress share one defining trait: They stopped treating accessibility as a silo.

Instead of assigning it to one team or addressing it only after a complaint, the most mature programs build accessibility into design, development, and content workflows from the start. They pair internal accountability with outside expertise. They use automated monitoring alongside human review to catch what automated tools alone miss. And they measure progress not just by compliance checkboxes, but by the customer experience and business outcomes that accessibility drives.

For businesses still on the sidelines, the opportunity is wide open. Nearly six in 10 organizations are still not where they need to be, which means most of their competitors have not figured this out either. The companies that move now will build something their competitors are not: a digital experience that works for everyone who shows up, and a business that grows because of it.

This story was produced by AudioEye and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.