Accessible Design is a Competitive Advantage

Most companies have more in common with kindergarteners than they want to believe. They love routine, they crave constant praise, and they have to be shown their mistakes in order to learn from them.

And nowhere is this truer than with accessibility. Companies treat accessibility like eating their vegetables or going to bed on time—they know they should, but they put it off until someone forces them.

But accessibility is more than a chore. Just like getting a good night’s sleep will make you a sharper, faster version of yourself, accessible design is a legitimate competitive advantage. While your competitors are putting it off, you could be expanding your reach, climbing the rankings, delighting every user who lands on your site, and sleeping soundly without legal landmines.

If this seems like a dream come true, keep reading. We’ll dig into 4 primary benefits to prioritizing accessibility in the pursuit of competitive advantage.

Advantage 1: Expanded Audience Reach

Here’s a stat that should make every business owner sit up straight: 1 in 4 American adults lives with a long-term disability. That’s approximately 61 million potential customers—and we haven’t even talked about temporary or situational disabilities yet.

Broke your arm and can’t use a mouse? Congrats, you temporarily need accessibility features.

Trying to watch a product video in a loud coffee shop or quiet library? Now you have a situational disability that necessitates the use of accessibility features.

All of a sudden, that niche audience starts looking a whole lot like…everyone.

And it gets better. The global population is aging faster than a banana in August, with 1.4 billion people expected to be over 60 by 2030. Not only are older adults your highest-spending demographic, but they increasingly need larger text, clearer contrast, and simpler navigation.

Don’t hang a “closed” sign on your digital front door, or you could find that your target demographics choose a competitor with more foresight.

Advantage 2: Improved SEO Performance

More of a numbers person than a people person? Accessibility still matters for you.

The search engine bots that crawl your website are basically visually impaired users. They can’t see your gorgeous hero image, click your fancy dropdown menu, or watch your auto-playing background video. What they can do is read semantic HTML, follow keyboard-navigable links, and index descriptive alt text.

Sound familiar? That’s because Google’s crawlers and screen readers want all the same things.

When you add alt text to images, you’re not just helping your users—you’re telling Google what’s in those images so your content can be ranked. When you use proper heading hierarchy, you’re creating a clear content structure that assistive technologies and search algorithms both understand. Clean, semantic HTML? That’s like catnip to crawlers. Descriptive link text instead of “Click Here”? Good rewards that with better context and higher rankings.

Here’s where it gets spicy. Mobile accessibility and mobile-first indexing are kissing cousins. Google now prioritizes mobile versions of sites, and guess what makes a site mobile-friendly? Large touch targets, readable text, keyboard navigation—all accessibility best practices.

It’s almost like designing for everyone makes your site better for everyone.

Advantage 3: Enhanced Usability for All (aka The Curb Cut Effect)

Ever noticed those sloped curb cuts at street corners? They were originally designed for wheelchair users, but they’ve had a positive impact on everyone’s mobility. Parents with strollers, delivery workers with dollies, travelers with rolling suitcases, you name it.

That’s the curb cut effect. The original design was to accommodate disability, but the results improve things for everybody. And it works exactly the same way online.

The captions you add for deaf users help people who choose to watch videos on mute (your coworkers thank you for that, btw). The keyboard navigation you built for motor-impaired users lets visitors fly through your site, finding exactly what they need in moments. The jargon-free language you wrote for cognitive accessibility helps make your message clear for everyone.

High contrast ratios help people viewing your site in direct sunlight. Larger click targets help commuters on bumpy bus rides.

These are accommodations—they’re just good design that happened to start with accessibility in mind. And when people find it easier to use your site and understand your message, they’re more likely to convert than ever before.

Advantage 4: Legal Risk Mitigation

OK, let’s just talk about it. When the Supreme Court ruled that websites count under the Americans with Disabilities Act, they essentially declared open season for plaintiff attorneys, and accessibility lawsuits exploded across the country. Companies like Domino’s and Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment, along with literally hundreds of retailers, all learned the hard way that ignoring accessibility guidelines is a good way to get sued.

Want to know what keeps your CFO up at night? The average accessibility lawsuit settlement ranges from $10,000 to $75,000, plus attorney fees that can be sky-high. Then add the cost of emergency remediation, ongoing monitoring requirements, and the countless hours your team spends in legal meetings instead of running the site.

Starts to sound like a proactive audit might be worth your time and investment, right?

But the real cost isn’t even financial. It’s the blow to your brand reputation. When you get sued for accessibility, the public perception is that your company excludes disabled people. That’s not exactly a cute look in 2026.

Luckily, this is a very easy advantage to capture because you control the timing. Build accessibility in from the start so you’re not scrambling when the demand letter arrives. You’ll be sleeping soundly while your competitors write settlement checks.

Turn Accessibility Into Your Advantage

The beauty of accessibility initiatives is that you don’t need to boil the ocean on day one. Start with high-impact wins like adding alt text to images, fixing your heading hierarchy, and bumping up your color contrast. Build it into the fabric of your digital properties so that you can reap compound rewards forever—more traffic, better conversions, wider reach, and zero legal landmines.

The reality is, accessible design isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s not even just about doing the right thing (although we think that matters the most). It’s about creating experiences people actually want to use so you can dominate in your industry. While your competitors are treating accessibility like a chore, you can be turning it into your secret weapon.

At Prolific, we don’t just talk about this stuff. We actually make it happen. Through ongoing partnerships with national leaders in accessibility, proprietary software designed to improve accessibility for everyone, and decades of experience making the accessible truly beautiful, we elevate every design. We know how to identify gaps, prioritize fixes, and build accessibility into your digital property so it’s not an 11th-hour scramble.

Ready to make your digital presence work for everyone—and blow past your competition in the process? Let’s talk today.