How Digital Design Can Drive Business Inclusion and Growth

B Corps Offer Digital Accessibility Strategies and Resources for Businesses

It’s estimated that 16% of people worldwide experience some form of disability. However, many business websites fall short on accessibility and miss opportunities to connect with potential customers and other stakeholders. In addition, changing standards in regulations such as the Americans with Disabilities Act are raising awareness and prompting reconsideration of the need for accessible digital design.

By incorporating the concepts of universal design, businesses can provide websites and other digital products that are accessible and usable by more people — including those with permanent or long-term disabilities — and advance their diversity, equity, and inclusion journey.

Creating more functional and accessible digital products can also help businesses build their bottom lines by connecting with people with disabilities. “It’s the third-largest market in the United States at $490 billion, and the third-largest in the world at $13 trillion,” says Daman Wandke of Wandke Accessibility “The longer you live, the more likely you will acquire a disability.”

Digital Accessibility Strategies That Champion Inclusion

Wandke Accessibility is one of three Certified B Corporations that shared digital accessibility strategies during a session at Champions Retreat 2024, a gathering of the U.S. and Canadian B Corp community. Through their work with clients, the three B Corps build awareness of accessibility protocols and best practices and help create more inclusive digital experiences.

Wandke, a disability rights advocate with cerebral palsy, founded Wandke Accessibility to improve web accessibility for people with disabilities. The B Corp offers audits, testing, remediation, and training to ensure websites are inclusive. Wandke Accessibility also ensures websites comply with regulations like the Americans with Disabilities Act or Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act so that organizations can avoid legal repercussions and fines. 

“It’s important to include people with disabilities when talking about accessibility because we know the barriers and the experience best. That is what we offer as a disability-owned business,” Wandke says. “We are primed to empower businesses and organizations that are ready to incorporate access and inclusion of disabled people into their best practices.”

Accessible design helps businesses expand their audience reach and build stronger connections with individual customers. “Making digital products accessible expands the user base to include more people with disabilities, who represent a significant portion of the population,” Wandke says. “By enhancing accessibility, businesses can attract and retain more customers, increasing their market share and overall user engagement.”

Wandke Accessibility’s work with a regional credit union provides one example of the value and importance of accessible digital design. Through a series of website audits, the B Corp identified accessibility issues that were addressed in the next year. Improvements to the website’s accessibility and user experience resulted in enhanced keyword rankings. The updates also produced internal benefits for the organization, as the credit union saw increased trust and collaboration between its development and compliance teams.

“Accessible design often leads to a better overall user experience for everyone,” Wandke says. “Features that aid users with disabilities, such as improved navigation and readability, can also benefit users without disabilities by making digital interactions more intuitive and user-friendly.”

Maiya Holliday of Mangrove, left, and Daman Wandke of Wandke Accessibility discuss digital accessibility strategies during a Champions Retreat 2024 session.

Embedding Digital Accessibility to Enhance Social Impact

Since its founding in 2009, Briteweb has worked to build social impact through its work partnerships with nonprofits, foundations, and social ventures. The B Corp certified,  Vancouver-based web design and branding agency embeds accessibility throughout its brand and web project processes. “Accessibility is something we think about and incorporate throughout our entire process; it’s not a box we tick at the end,” says Jill de Chavez, Managing Director of Briteweb. 

This includes brand design elements such as readable color contrast, clear typography, logo scalability, and clear messaging and imagery. “These elements work toward ensuring that everyone, regardless of their abilities or circumstances, can seamlessly interact with content,” says de Chavez. “This goes beyond supporting those with long-term disabilities; it also includes people with temporary impairments, those in challenging environments, or even just folks using different devices.”

Compliance standards are always, and will always be, changing, she says. Focusing on a user-centered approach ensures that your designs not only meet current requirements but are also adaptable to future updates.

“A focus on user needs helps identify and eliminate barriers that might prevent people from fully interacting with a website or digital product,” de Chavez says. “This might involve implementing screen reader compatibility, keyboard navigation, or voice command features.”

Aligning websites with user needs and accessibility standards also helps companies demonstrate their commitment to social impact, which is becoming increasingly important to users. “At the end of the day, good design is accessible design. Great designers can make something that’s accessible, while still flexing their creative muscles,” de Chavez says. “A great website with great design can still be — and should be — accessible to all its users.”

Creating Inclusive Digital Experiences Amid Evolving Accessibility Standards

Mangrove CEO and Founder Maiya Holliday said changing accessibility standards can present challenges for businesses that may not have the internal capacity to keep up. That makes universal design an effective option.

“You have to keep learning to keep up with accessibility standards, and apply those standards early and often,” she says. “You also don’t have to wait to be an expert. We’re all a work in progress, and no one is going to ‘win’ at accessibility or do it perfectly. Start where you are and keep improving from there.” 

To reinforce the importance of accessible design, Mangrove recently updated its vision statement with its recent brand updates. Now, the B Corp’s employees are encouraged “to create joyful, equitable, inclusive digital experiences that enable changemakers to do their best work.” Holliday says they pursue that goal with a focus on several key concepts, including how to test and measure digital accessibility. 

Mangrove’s work is guided by the four principles of accessibility, ensuring anyone using the web has content that is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), these principles represent the fundamental aspects of web accessibility and provide a benchmark for creating more inclusive design and content.

Holliday says that by applying universal design principles from the beginning of a project and prioritizing accessibility, clients — especially those with a social mission — can maximize their digital capacity for inclusion and treat site visitors as equally as possible. The promise of the web is fulfilled when digital designs meet those principles, Holliday says. “If you’re building it in a way that is truly inclusive, you’re paving the way to have a digital product that will be more sustainable and far more usable in the future,” she said. 

See more Champions Retreat 2024 sessions in the YouTube playlist.