In 2000, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation reported that 10% of Internet users had a disability that interfered with their ability to access the web.

That same year, ICann reported that disabled Internet users owned $188 billion in disposable income.

That was almost 10 years ago.

Imagine what those numbers look like now.

Yet, there’s a stunning curiosity in the world of ecommerce today- substantial resistance to making websites accessible to all users, including the disabled.

There are obvious benefits to investing in accessibility. The possibility of increased profits is usually enough to get any business owner on board. But there are other, equally relevant advantages to making websites usable. Going the accessible route can mean that that you’ll have:

• A more manageable website (lower maintenance costs)
• A better search engine rank because of the extra coding (more visitors)
• Compliance to state and federal discrimination laws (better PR)
• Improved overall website usability (compatibility with browsers, faster website loading)

And that’s just for starters.

Last year, Webcredible assessed the accessibility of 20 top retailer websites in the UK. Not only did they find that websites only achieved a very basic accessibility, they found that the least accessible part on a website was the checkout page!

Talk about a barrier to sales- one that many business owners voluntarily put up.

But the UK isn’t alone. Target suffered a real blow last year when a class action suit was brought against them by the National Federation of the Blind. Failure to make their website accessible cost them $6 million dollars.

After such a public and costly case, you’d think that business owners would be quick to insure themselves against the same bad luck by either retrofitting their websites or creating websites from scratch with accessibility in mind.

But you’d be wrong.

Business owners fear the loss of substantial time and money in making their websites usable. What they don’t realize is that there are lots of little things that can be done to greatly increase accessibility until improvements can be made on a grander scale.

Business owners can:

• Use descriptive tags with pictures
• Close-caption audio messages
• Space out links
• Go easy on the Flash, Javascript and graphics

…and find a substantial improvement in accessibility.

In addition, they can use:

• More descriptive text with links
• “Skip Links” so that users can access other areas of websites faster
• Scalable fonts
• CSS, XHTML
• Alternate descriptions for media (like close-captioning)
• Tags

…to help better their website’s functionality for the disabled.

Some may claim that it’s a challenge to increase accessibility. The idea of this challenge scares a lot of business owners away from the task.

This may be why, despite increasing awareness about accessibility needs and the legal issues surrounding them, many top retailers still aren’t doing all they can to make websites accessible. Alex at LifeSpy theorizes that it’s simply a business decision. Retailers weigh the costs of redesigning websites for accessibility with the expected, resulting profits. If the numbers don’t add up, or if the math is just plain wrong, then the investment isn’t thought to be sound.

Of course, altering a business’s website shouldn’t be taken lightly. However, business owners may mistakenly believe that by not changing anything, they’ll save a few bucks. They’re wrong. By keeping the status quo, they risk marginalizing a group of people and acquiring a reputation for treating the disabled as second-class citizens, unworthy of attention and consideration. An accusation of discrimination wouldn’t be far behind and could blacken any business’s name. All of these things could end up costing a business with a dependence on reputation, word-of-mouth and positive customer experience a great deal.

The bonus is that if you make your website accessible and welcome users with disabilities, you’ll be reaching other types of customers, too. Your website will be just as accessible to people on mobile devices as it is to those who use screen readers.

The moral of this story is that to get customers, you have to open doors. They’ll enter, whatever their method.

For those ready to make the change, James Van Arsdale wrote a good post that helps that business owners understand the issue of accessibility and the laws and campaigns surrounding it. Of special interest to you will be the links and descriptions of the World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Have you thought about making your website accessible? If so, what types of implementation are you using?