People ask me why I talk about accessibility when not every product has users with disabilities. "What are you afraid is going to happen?"
Well shoot, let's figure this out.
What's the best case scenario when you don't fix your accessibility problems?
You keep chugging along exactly as you are. Your product works fine for the people already using it. Nobody complains. Nobody sues. You save some development time and ship stuff faster.
Maybe you're right that users with disabilities aren't using your product. Everything stays exactly the same and you never hear about it.
That's it. That's the ceiling. The absolute best outcome is that nothing changes.
What's the worst case scenario when you don't fix your accessibility problems?
You get sued.
Accessibility lawsuits are real and growing. Companies like Domino's fought this all the way to the Supreme Court and lost. Even if you win, you're paying lawyers tens of thousands of dollars. If you lose, you're paying damages plus fixing everything anyway, except now you're doing it on a court-ordered timeline.
You lose customers you didn't know you had.
One in five people lives with a disability. Your analytics don't capture the people who bounced immediately. They just left. Silently. They're buying from your competitor instead.
Your entire user experience degrades.
Accessibility isn't just for users with disabilities. Captions are useful for people in loud coffee shops or quiet libraries. Colour contrast helps everyone on their phone in bright sunlight. Power users who hate touching their mouse appreciate keyboard support. When you don't fix accessibility, you're making your product worse for everyone.
You can't land enterprise contracts.
Big companies have procurement requirements. Government contracts legally require accessibility. Universities need it. When RFPs come in asking about WCAG compliance and you have to say "we haven't prioritised that," you're out of the running.
Your team builds on a shaky foundation.
Every feature you ship on an inaccessible base makes the problem worse. Every refactor gets more expensive every sprint. Eventually you're looking at a complete rebuild, not a fix.
So yeah.
The best case scenario is nothing happens. The worst case is you lose money, customers, opportunities and respect. When the upside is zero and the downside is quite a lot, the choice seems pretty obvious to me.