Redesigning your product's UI to be accessible will cost you. It involves a significant number of development hours to retrofit an existing product, and this translates into a big red line item on your balance sheet.
If you want to test your product with specialised assistive technology and involve users with disabilities to do that, it'll cost you. Recruiting users is not what I'd call the cheap option.
Training your design and development teams on accessibility best practices isn't free. Workshops and certification programs can really set you back.
Hiring a specialised accessibility consultant will likely put a dent in your budget. But they deeply understand the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and can pinpoint exactly where your product misses the mark.
The bottom line is, if you want your product to be accessible, it'll cost you.
If you don't care about accessibility, that'll cost you too. You'll still pay. You just don't know when and how much.
Just think of:
- the lawsuits costing hundreds of thousands in legal fees, settlements and mandatory fixes
- losing customers, when you understand that 15% of the world's population lives with some form of disability
- the reputation damage, when your users bad-mouth your product because they can't use it
- the government contracts you lose because they require vendors to meet strict accessibility standards
So if you think about it, paying for accessibility up front is a good way to control your costs.