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The facts behind the fiction.
Why accessibility belongs to every role, not just developers.
WHY IT MATTERS
1 in 4 1 in 6
69%
£17.1bn
people in the UK are disabled (16.7 million)
people worldwide have a significant disability (1.3 billion) of disabled shoppers click away from hard-to-use sites. Only 8% tell in online sales UK retailers could be missing each year
of disabled shoppers click away from hard-to- use sites. Only 8% tell the site owner.
DWP Family Resources Survey 2024-25 · WHO, 2023 · Click-Away Pound Survey 2019 of disabled shoppers click away from hard-to-use sites. Only 8% tell the site owner. £17.1bn
THE WEB TODAY: MANY FAILURES START BEFORE CODE
95.9% 56.1
83.9% 53.1%
of the top 1 million home pages fail WCAG checks detected errors per home page, on average
have low-contrast text: a design decision are missing image alt text: a content task
WebAIM Million, 2026. Six error types make up 96% of all errors found.
One heading, three jobs — how the W3C splits a single feature
Writers
Designers
Developers
Write the heading text and communicate the heading level
Define how the headings look
Code or mark up the headings so assistive tech can use them
Fix it early, pay less
Development: ≈$350 cheaper per defect than in QA
QA: ≈$450 cheaper per defect than in production
Production: $800+ per defect
Deque estimates: early work can cut accessibility spend from ~15% to 5% or less of a budget.
The law looks at the organisation
“
UK: Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018, including a published accessibility statement
When accessibility is left until late in a project, the responsibility often falls on developers.
EU: the European Accessibility Act has applied to many products and services since 28 June 2025
DON'T PASS THE BUCK. BREAK THE BARRIERS. Accessibility for all
W3C WAI, Accessibility Roles and Responsibilities Mapping
Accessibility for all
Sources: WebAIM, The WebAIM Million (2026) · W3C WAI, Accessibility Roles and Responsibilities Mapping (draft) · Deque, “Doing the numbers: Digital accessibility and shifting left” (2024) · DWP, Family Resources Survey 2024 to 2025 · WHO, Disability fact sheet (2023) · Click-Away Pound Survey 2019, via AbilityNet · GOV.UK, Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies · Directive (EU) 2019/882, European Accessibility Act.