The $13 Trillion Accessibility Blind Spot: How Brands Lose 15% of Revenue

Many developers still treat web accessibility as a “nice-to-have”, something optional or meant for a small group of users. It’s often framed as a separate concern, disconnected from everyday product decisions, and easy to postpone until “later”.

In reality, accessibility is not a special feature for a small group. It is a basic layer of good UX that almost everyone needs at some point. Most of us have experienced it firsthand: trying to read text on a phone in bright sunlight, watching a muted video on the train without captions, tapping the wrong element because a button is too small, forgetting glasses, or waiting on a slow connection for images to load. Accessibility does not just help people with disabilities. It makes products work better in everyday situations.

I grew up in Odesa, Ukraine, a city known for sunny days, beautiful architecture, and famously bad curbs. As kids, my friends and I rode bikes everywhere, and jumping over curbs was not optional. If you could not bunny-hop a concrete ledge, the whole neighborhood laughed at you. You simply could not get around without that skill. We became PhD-level mountain bikers without ever leaving city sidewalks.

In the digital world, we still build those curbs. Some users can learn to jump over them. Others never will. For them, the same curb is not an obstacle but a wall.

1. The Revenue Leak: Why Inaccessibility Is a Tax on Growth

According to the World Health Organization disability report, over 1.3 billion people (roughly 16% of the global population) live with some form of disability. When a digital product isn’t accessible, you aren’t just failing a user. You are burning your client’s marketing budget by driving away ready-to-buy customers.

The Click-Away Pound Report found that 71% of users with access needs will immediately abandon a website if it is difficult to use. They don’t call support or file a ticket. They simply take their business to a competitor.

The market impact is massive. The “Purple Dollar” (the collective spending power of people with disabilities and their families) is estimated at around $13 trillion globally, according to analyses by the World Economic Forum.

When your codebase creates “digital curbs,” you are throwing 10–15% of your potential conversions into the trash. To put that in perspective, you are overlooking a consumer segment comparable in size to the entire populations of the European Union, the United States, and Brazil combined.

2. The Cost of Ignorance

If you think accessibility is optional, real-world precedents show that these “digital curbs” come with a tangible price. This is not just about lawsuits or compliance checklists. It’s about losing users you already paid to acquire and breaking core product flows in ways that are easy to miss.

Target (2008): The $10M Broken Checkout

Target paid $6 million in damages and $3.7 million in legal fees because its e-commerce funnel was functionally inaccessible at the point of conversion:

  • Invisible Actions: Critical buttons lacked text labels, making key actions silent for screen readers
  • Mouse-Only Navigation: Completing a purchase required a mouse, locking out keyboard-only users
  • Missing Semantics: Poor HTML structure turned product selection into a guessing game

Beyond the $9.7M settlement, Target was forced into a three-year, court-mandated accessibility overhaul.

Source: ADA Southeast Analysis

Domino’s lost a three-year legal battle after blind users were unable to place pizza orders through its website and mobile app using screen readers:

  • Broken Navigation: Screen readers could not interpret menu structure or ordering steps
  • Mouse-Dependent Controls: Interactive elements could not be triggered via keyboard
  • Failed Checkout: The ordering process broke before completion

Domino’s argued that accessibility rules should not apply to digital products, but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal.

The precedent: digital storefronts are places of public accommodation. If users cannot complete a core business action, the company faces direct legal liability.

Source: ADA Southeast Analysis

Winn-Dixie (2021): When a Website Blocks Physical Services

Winn-Dixie lost a legal case despite not selling products online because its website failed to provide equal access to essential in-store services:

  • Pharmacy Access: Screen reader users could not refill prescriptions or view pharmacy information
  • Digital Coupons: Online-only discounts were unavailable to blind users
  • Store Access: Essential features like store locators and service scheduling were inaccessible

The court ruled that even without e-commerce, a website tightly integrated with physical locations must be accessible — digital barriers are treated the same as physical ones.

The precedent: when a website serves as a gateway to real-world services, inaccessibility becomes direct legal liability.

Source: ADA Southeast Analysis

These cases matter not because every product will end up in court, but because they show how digital accessibility failures translate into real-world consequences. While these lawsuits targeted large corporations, the same legal standards apply regardless of company size. Accessibility requirements under the ADA and EAA have no revenue threshold.

3. Market Reality & The 2025 Deadline

The digital accessibility market is growing steadily. According to market analysis by Straits Research, the sector was valued at $1.4B in 2022 and is projected to reach $3.2B by 2034, growing at an 8.6% CAGR.

Drivers of Growth

  • EAA Compliance (June 2025). The European accessibility act is the “GDPR of Accessibility.” By mid-2025, meeting WCAG standards becomes a legal requirement for products and services in the EU. This isn’t just UX debt anymore; it’s regulatory risk.

  • The 94.8% Gap: According to the latest WebAIM Million Report, 94.8% of the top one million websites fail basic accessibility tests. This gap highlights how accessibility issues remain widespread across the web and creates a clear opportunity for teams that address them early.

  • The Digital Divide: Millions of users remain underserved by the digital economy. Closing this gap allows products to reach users who are often excluded from standard digital experiences, particularly in e-commerce and SaaS. If your competitor’s checkout breaks for screen readers and yours doesn’t, you win by default.

Ignoring these shifts is no longer just a UX concern; it reflects a lack of preparation for what is becoming the baseline of the digital economy.

Next: The accessibility fundamentals that prevent these failures, from semantic HTML to focus management.

Is your product ready for the 2025 EAA deadline?