The hidden ROI of accessibility

5 hidden benefits of accessibility that impact your bottom line

Accessibility is too often treated as a compliance checkbox. It's a hard sell when stakeholders see it as extra work, especially in industries where legal requirements don't yet apply.

That's starting to change. The European Accessibility Act (EAA) has shifted the conversation, but the real case for accessibility goes beyond legal obligation. This post will help you reframe it as what it actually is: an investment with measurable returns for your business and every user you serve.

An estimated £274 billion; that's the annual spending power of disabled households in the UK alone. Accessibility isn't just a "nice-to-have", it's a genuine growth opportunity, and one that's more achievable than it sounds.

Here are five accessibility improvements you can make on your website today, that pay for themselves. Skip to

1. Clear page structure
2. Descriptive alt text
3. Optimal page performance
4. Clear language
5. Usable website

Accessibility is conversion optimisation for an underserved market. And because accessibility overlaps with usability, mobile best practice and SEO, one improvement can lift multiple parts of your digital performance all at once. It really is a no brainer.

In practice, accessibility improvements on your website often lead to clearer content, better search performance and improved discovery. Plus, you instantly expand your target audience with a more usable site. The final cherry on the cake? An accessible website helps to lower ongoing support and maintenance costs.

The opportunity is big! 73% of disabled online shoppers have experienced barriers on more than a quarter of the websites they visited. Remove those barriers with an accessible website, and you remove the friction that stops people from converting.

Key takeaway: Better structure reduces friction and improves understanding of the content, leading to stronger visibility and more qualified traffic over time.

Clear structure uses semantic headings correctly and in the right order (from H1 to H2, H3, and so on), and includes clear link text that makes sense out of context.

If you’re a skim reader, you’ve probably left pages where you can’t find what you came for quickly. The same friction hits users of screen readers harder when headings are missing, repeated, or used purely for styling, making it harder to find information quickly.

The improvements that make your site more accessible to humans also make it easier for search and AI to index your content. Because accessible content is well-structured, clearer, and less ambiguous, it is easier to interpret and reuse.

In other words, when your content is accessible, you improve visibility in search results and AI-generated answers.

Use our page structure checklist to check your webpages:

• Use proper headings. (Do web pages have H1-H3 headings. Or are you just putting text in bold instead?)
• Maintain a logical hierarchy. (Ensure your pages only have one H1. Check headers are in the right order, or are they being used decoratively?)
• Replace click here links. (Replace with link text that makes sense out of context. Ask: If you heard this link read aloud, would you have any idea where it was linking ?)
• Quick win: Review your top 10 pages by web traffic and check for heading order consistency and descriptive link text.

Key takeaway: Alt text removes barriers and makes content discoverable.

Alt text (alternative text) is a short, descriptive text alternative for images, charts and graphs. It makes visual content accessible for everyone, especially people who rely on screen readers.

Alt text explains what an image is and why it is there. It fosters inclusion by allowing more people to access the same information, even if they can’t see the image. It’s also helpful beyond accessibility, as the text appears when an image doesn't load.

From a search perspective, alt text helps search engines understand what an image represents. So by adding alt text, you can improve accessibility and reach with minimal effort. It’s one of the quickest changes you can make that improves both user experience and discoverability.

Audit your alt text and remember, alt text isn’t about describing everything; it’s about describing what matters.

• Describe the purpose: Does every meaningful image have alt text that explains its purpose?
• Be specific: Is the alt text specific and helpful (not “image of” or a file name)?
• Reduce noise: Are decorative images marked correctly so screen readers can skip it?
• Quick win: Review your top 10 pages for web traffic and audit their images, ensuring each image has descriptive alt text. If an image is purely decorative, skip the alt text!

Key takeaway: Faster, more stable pages reduce friction, improve accessibility, and help more users complete key actions.

Page performance is not just about speed. It is also about stability and responsiveness. A high-performing page loads quickly and remains usable while the page renders.

Performance issues are often accessibility issues. When content loads slowly, shifts unexpectedly, or fails to communicate loading states clearly, it becomes harder to use. For people who use keyboards, screen readers, magnification, or other assistive technology to access content, the performance issues are multiplied.

• Slow pages cause frustration, confusion, and abandoned journeys.
• Layout shifts make users lose their place or click the wrong button.
• Poor loading feedback can make a page seem broken.

These issues affect everyone, but they can create bigger barriers for users who rely on predictable, stable interactions.

Visitors are more likely to leave pages that load slowly or shift as they load. Therefore, making interactions more stable helps users stay engaged and complete forms, searches, and checkouts more easily.

Research from Google found that reducing mobile load time by 0.1 seconds increased conversions by 8% in retail and 10% in travel.

Use our performance checklist to audit your web pages:

• Start with CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): Prioritise pages and templates with high layout shift
• Eliminate data hogs: Resize heavy images and remove unnecessary scripts
• Optimise images: Use modern image formats such as AVIF and WebP where possible
• Communicate loading states: Make loading states clear and ensure they are announced to assistive technology when needed
• Quick win: Identify your slowest high-traffic templates — such as home, landing, product or service pages, search results, and checkout or form pages — and fix the biggest issues first.

Key takeaway: Clearer language reduces friction, improves understanding, and helps more users complete key actions.

Clear language means using everyday words, short sentences, and straightforward phrasing. It helps users understand what you offer, what to do next, and what to expect.

Plain language supports accessibility by making content easier to understand and process. This is especially helpful for:

• People with cognitive disabilities
• Neurodivergent users
• Anyone who reads quickly
• Anyone using a small screen

Technical jargon, idioms and long sentences can all increase cognitive load. And when content is harder to process, users are more likely to misunderstand key information or drop off before completing the task.

Clear content helps reduce bounce rates and lower support demand because users can find answers and complete tasks without extra help. Therefore, when users understand your message and the next step, they are more likely to take action quickly.

Use our readability checklist to audit your web pages:

• Replace jargon: Swap technical terms with plain English where possible
• Reduce sentence length: Shorten long sentences and break up large blocks of text
• Make it scannable: Use headings and bullet points to make content easier to scan
• Be specific: Make instructions and CTAs specific, so users know what happens next
• Quick win: Review your key service and conversion pages, then simplify introductions, benefits, pricing copy, and CTAs that may be causing hesitation or confusion.

Key takeaway: A usable website removes friction and improves completion rates.

A usable website is a website without friction. They are a joy to interact with, as they help people find what they need and understand what to do next. Usable websites have the following elements:

• Clear navigation
• Straightforward labels
• Helpful feedback
• Forms that are easy to complete

Accessibility and usability are closely linked, but they do differ slightly. Despite this, the outcome is usually the same: accessibility improvements improve the user experience (UX) for everyone. And when users can move through your site more easily, they are less likely to abandon key journeys.

Brands that prioritise usability are getting so much more for their money than just regulatory compliance. Unsurprisingly, a usable site enhances conversion rates whilst reducing support demand and strengthening trust in your brand.

And because these improvements affect multiple journeys at once, the return often compounds over time.

Refer to our usability checklist to audit your web pages:

• Keep testing: Test important journeys end-to-end with keyboard-only navigation
• Fix blockers: Fix common blockers such as confusing forms, unclear CTAs, missing labels, and poor error handling
• Accessibility everywhere: Build accessibility into content, design and development
• Measure impact: From conversion, drop-off, form errors, and support demand
• Quick win: Audit one high-traffic journey, fix the top three friction points, and track what changes.

There’s a common misconception that accessibility updates are a cost to a business. But in reality, it’s clear that accessibility updates deliver measurable ROI.

The changes mentioned above show that in addition to doing the right thing, accessibility tweaks offer hidden benefits that boost site performance. Accessibility changes reduces support requests and improve outcomes such as better engagement, reach, and conversions.

If you want a practical way to build a website that maximises conversions, focus on accessibility fixes. Because accessibility isn’t an add-on. It’s a quality signal and a growth strategy. If you intentionally improve accessibility, you improve your entire digital experience.

Start by auditing your top 10 web pages and manually tracking your highest-value journeys to identify barriers and assess the commercial impact.

Alternatively, you can sign up for Insytful to identify pages with accessibility issues and focus your time and resources on fixes.