The ROI of Manual Web Accessibility Services

As a marketer in higher education, you constantly balance priorities such as boosting enrollment, enhancing your institution’s reputation, and effectively reaching prospective students.

You know that you need a website that actually works for your institution, but can everyone use it?

I know many people believe that web accessibility is a sunk cost that you “have” to pay, but there’s an actual ROI.

Research has found that for every $1 you spend on web accessibility, you get back $100. 

Yes, you have legal and ethical obligations to make your website inclusive, but you can actually get back an impressive ROI, which is a win-win. 

Do you want to get the most out of your investment? You need manual web accessibility services. Let’s talk about it.

Even some of the best marketing tactics don’t see a $100:$1 ROI—email marketing averages around $36:$1, while social media typically is $2:$1.

So, how does making your website more accessible have such an incredible impact on your marketing?

Think about it: a website that isn’t fully accessible to individuals with disabilities (visual, auditory, motor, cognitive) shuts the door on a significant portion of your potential student pool and their key decision helpers (such as their parents, counselors, and teachers).

And before you tell me “this isn’t my audience,” you’re wrong. Millions of individuals live with disabilities. Some have temporary disabilities and more live with them for their entire lives. 

Accessibility ensures that your entire website is usable for everyone, improving keyboard usage, ensuring content is understandable, making your website easy to navigate, and so much more.

When you make your website accessible, you open your institution to a wider audience and increase your applicant pool.ROI Benefit: Increased reach translates directly to a larger pool of potential applicants, leading to higher enrollment rates and increased tuition revenue.

Yea, let’s talk about it. Your institution has values that it abides by, and you can’t make those values any clearer than by focusing on disability inclusion.

For the last several years, we as a society have cared a lot about who we purchase from and the organization’s morals. We all know that this concern is reaching a fever pitch, and those feelings affect where students want to attend school.

Now is the time to be super clear about your values. An accessible website builds trust and fosters a positive perception of your brand as an educational institution. It can also help you stand out against your competitors who aren’t doing the same.

ROI Benefit: You’ll attract the right students for your institution and foster a positive perception of your brand. This can bring in money from tuition and donors. 

Want to know a remarkable fact about web accessibility best practices? They perfectly align with user experience recommendations.

Accessibility guidelines lead to a clearer website for everyone. They improve the overall structure, offer intuitive navigation, and create easily understandable content. These changes benefit every visitor to your website.

Often, when we make accessibility improvements, they also help a site load faster. This smoother user experience will increase the time your visitors spend on your website, giving you time to sell them on your institution.

ROI Benefit: Improved user experience leads to higher engagement, more inquiries, and a greater likelihood of prospective students completing applications and enrolling.

Like accessibility aligns with user experience recommendations, it also improves your search engine optimization. Google and other search engines prioritize user-friendly websites. They also “look” at your website the same way assistive technology does, so when your website is built to be accessible, it’s very Google-bot friendly.

When a website is built with accessibility in mind, it’s coded using semantic HTML. This code helps search engines understand your content better.

Providing alternatives for images and video content helps Google understand and rank it better.

And when users can navigate your website easily, it signals to search engines that you have the right content for their searchers.

ROI Benefit: Everything we do for web accessibility improves your SEO. With an accessible website, you’ll drive more qualified traffic to your website. Meaning you can reduce your reliance on paid advertising.

All of these benefits sound great! Can you get them through automated tools or overlays?

Unfortunately no.

I run a lot of accessibility tests, and automated tools only find a fraction of the issues. 

It’s not just testing either. Automated overlay tools claim to fix issues, but don’t. They help with minor adjustments, but don’t fix core problems. Worse, they can make the entire accessibility experience more confusing.

Automated tools and checkers can’t fix the critical nuances that can impact the experience for individuals with disabilities.

With manual web accessibility services, you get human evaluation to identify and address complex barriers. This ensures that your website is genuinely inclusive and user-friendly. 

Manual accessibility testing and remediation ensure that you reach WCAG compliance, which is also essential for Title II requirements.

Manual web accessibility services are not an expense but a strategic investment in your institution’s future. 

Expanding your reach, enhancing your reputation, improving user experience, and boosting your SEO will unlock significant returns that go far beyond mere compliance. 

It’s time to make accessibility a core pillar of your higher education marketing strategy and reap the rewards of a truly inclusive digital presence.