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.