What’s happening:
Leadership has asked an important question: What’s in it for us?
This question indicates a simple fact: if the CEO doesn’t care, it isn’t valuable work. Leadership focuses on their own goals and metrics for success (that’s how they became executives).
Their incentives compound differently from yours as an individual contributor. It’s time to recognize that.
Don’t offer problems, offer solutions
What leadership is always looking for is data to help them become better decision makers as they navigate unknowable territory.
As an accessibility professional, we should be able to demonstrate how inclusion helps leadership make better decisions for the enterprise.
The basics of monetization
Executives don’t think in terms of “High, medium and low severity defects” as cause to spend resources on accessibility.
The truth is that late stage capitalism often generates a sociopathic approach to generating shareholder value, and that type of executive is not interested in inclusion for inclusion’s sake. Whether you have 3 blocking severity defects or 300 blocking severity defects makes no difference until they see how it affects their bonus.
We must illustrate the value of accessibility in a way that makes sense to them.
The quickest and easiest example
Some aspects of accessibility value are easy to explain. The risk of a lawsuit or regulatory complaint has a direct cost associated with it in legal fees and damages.
By adding up the probability and cost associated with that event occurring, you can quickly arrive at a budget for mitigating that risk.
Let’s say that you are a one person grassroots accessibility advocate and you want to make a dent in your company’s compliance. Here’s one place you can start.
The average ADA complaint is estimated to cost $25,000,include legal fees and settlement and some minor audit/remediation. If your company is receiving 4 legitimate customer ADA complaints per year, the cost is $100,000. Annualized over 5 years this amount adds up to $500,000.
(These are just examples to explain the math. Naturally, if your organization has direct experience with complaints and that data is obtainable, use that instead. It may be much higher, but it won’t be much lower.)
A simple budget emerges
You now see a budget start to emerge. What would the enterprise spend now to keep part of that $500,000? Would it spend less than half?
If you can go to leadership and explain you “…can help the enterprise avoid six figures in legal costs over 5 years” and describe the budget required to do so, you’ve just answered their question, “What’s in it for us?”
Cost assumptions
Let’s assume everyone at this company costs $100/hr (with benefits) to keep the math simple. From developers to program managers, it’s the same salary and benefits package. (Of course it’s different at your enterprise — adapt and improvise, okay?)
Lighthouse integration
There will be a one time dev effort to integrate Google Lighthouse into the CI/CD pipeline, and continued annual maintenance.
We’ll assume a $4000 up front cost and $500 for each year after.
Role reassignment
Your own role is becoming ~20% accessibility focused to train developers how to interpret Lighthouse results and provide some technical coaching for 8 hours a week.
Training time
Developers will need 3 hours of dedicated training to learn how to interpret Lighthouse results and know when to ask for help. (Let’s assume future devs will learn on the job from existing Sr devs).
Complaint reduction
What if the worst case scenario is a only a 50% reduction in complaints to 2 per year, we still did a bit better than breaking even.
As a bonus, we’re able to explain to our customers with disabilities what efforts we’re making and ask for some patience, which further reduces costs.
| Item | Quantity | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Lighthouse integration | 40 hrs | $4,000 |
| Lighthouse support | 10 hrs/yr | $2000 |
| Role dedication: 20% | 5 years | $208,000 |
| Training: 25 UI devs | 3 hours | $7,500 |
| Total 5 year costs | $221,500 | |
| Max 5 year savings | $278,500 | |
| Min 5 year savings | $28,500 |
Saving $278,000 in a small company this size is a noticeable sum of money with very little risk.
You’ve now justified investing in accessibility with one metric.
Now, let’s add some more.