Accessibility Program Strategy: Turning This Year’s Budget into Measurable Impact

Digital accessibility funding is holding steady—and in many organizations, it’s growing. According to the Seventh Annual State of Digital Accessibility Report, more than two-thirds of organizations plan to maintain or increase their accessibility program budgets in the coming year. That’s a strong signal that digital accessibility has earned the appropriate recognition as a business priority.

However, increased funding alone doesn’t guarantee results.

As accessibility programs mature, the question facing many leaders is no longer whether to invest in accessibility, but how to manage their investments strategically. Without clear objectives, governance, and measurement, even well-funded programs can struggle to scale, demonstrate ROI, or sustain executive support.

At a time when nearly every accessibility program leader I work with says they need help building a business case, I’ve created the following guide to measuring the impact of accessibility investments, with the goal of bringing visibility into what those investments are actually delivering for the organization.

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Establish clear accessibility program investment objectives

Strategic investment starts with clarity. Sure, we want to achieve WCAG 2.2 AA conformance, yet a successful accessibility budget begins with an explicit, near-term, and measurable definition.

In the short-term, many organizations will be motivated by regulatory compliance—meeting requirements under laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act, European Accessibility Act, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and others around the globe. But over time, and perhaps in parallel, priorities may also revolve around growth (using accessibility to support revenue, customer acquisition, or retention) and engagement (user satisfaction, brand reputation, or market expansion).

These objectives will vary by sector, business model, and customer base. A B2B software company selling into enterprise procurement cycles may prioritize a clean “report card” (or Voluntary Product Accessibility Report—VPAT®) for accessibility support across the product and audit readiness, meaning they’re confident that known barriers are cleared so a comprehensive evaluation can begin. On the other hand, a consumer brand may focus on reducing friction across high-traffic digital journeys to retain, and even expand, its customer base.

What matters is intentional alignment. Accessibility budgets should connect directly to broader corporate objectives, such as:

• Pipeline protection or revenue growth.
• Customer satisfaction and retention.
• Brand trust and reputation.
• Operational efficiency and cost reduction.
• Legal risk reduction.

Our annual research findings consistently show that accessibility contributes to each of these outcomes—but organizations only see progress when investments are focused and aligned to goals that the entire business is watching in the current year. Those objectives, in turn, determine which tools, training, and services will deliver the greatest value.

Define governance and budget ownership

Even the most clearly defined objectives can falter without strong ownership.

One of the clearest patterns in our recent survey data is the connection between centralized accountability and accessibility program success. Organizations with a defined owner for accessibility decision-making—particularly budget decisions—are more likely to invest consistently, scale effectively, and demonstrate impact.

Without ownership, as I’ve personally experienced, accessibility spending becomes fragmented across departments, tools go underutilized, and reporting lacks consistency. Strategic investment management requires clear roles, decision rights, and oversight structures.

Many mature organizations use governance models such as:

• An accessibility steering committee, including executive sponsors and leaders from IT, legal, design, engineering, and customer experience.
• Cross-functional budget oversight, ensuring spend aligns with enterprise-wide priorities rather than siloed initiatives.
• Regular executive reviews, tying accessibility progress to business performance.

To be clear, successful programs often secure funding from many departments, but the ultimate decision of what, when, and how to purchase comes from one senior leader. Governance doesn’t need to be heavy or bureaucratic. The overall goal should be clarity: Who owns decisions? How will trade-offs be made? And how is success evaluated?

And, make sure your answers to these questions are recorded. As Lin-Manuel Miranda tells us in Hamilton, “And when you’re gone, who remembers your name? Who keeps your flame? Who tells your story?” Regardless of your organization’s structure, you’ll need to make a plan for who tells the accessibility story to the executive leadership team, and ensure that plan is documented (read: turnover-proof!) so it doesn’t fizzle if one champion leaves.

Allocate spend to the highest-impact capabilities

Once objectives and governance are in place, the next step is allocation. The most effective accessibility programs invest proactively in areas that scale impact, reduce manual effort, and support adoption across teams.

Based on our findings and our experience supporting client programs of all scales and sizes, here are some investment areas that consistently deliver outsized value.

AI-powered issue prioritization

Accessibility testing often surfaces hundreds, or even thousands, of findings—and for many teams, understanding what to focus on first is a manual, time consuming process. AI-powered accessibility solutions can streamline prioritization by detecting the most critical, high-impact issues, including those repeated across an asset or multiple assets. They can also group similar findings for more efficient remediation, so developers don’t burn valuable hours solving recurring issues individually.

Embedded tooling

Tools that embed accessibility checks and guidance directly into design, development, and content authoring workflows reduce rework and improve accessibility adoption. Investing in integrated digital accessibility tools pays off through faster time-to-resolution for issues and overall program efficiency.

Role-specific enablement

Accessibility succeeds when designers, developers, content creators, and product owners each receive training relevant to their role. When I started in accessibility 15 years ago, we focused on educating teams about how disabled users interact with technology and live independently. Today, while that formative foundation is important, fast-paced agile sprints require all team members, from scrum masters to content authors, to know what’s expected of them. Role-specific accessibility knowledge, like the cadence of manual testing by disabled users or the proper means of structuring headings for screen reader operability, increases team cohesion and connection with users.

Governance and measurement

Initial accessibility investments often focus on reporting, dashboards, and compliance tracking. Measuring your progress will help you demonstrate ROI or guide future investment decisions.

For maximum impact, your accessibility data needs to be on one platform. Imagine the chaos of an HR department storing employee payroll data separated from benefit elections. At too many organizations, though, accessibility data about apps lives in a separate space or tool from the data about kiosks and websites, which complicates governance and progress. Securing buy-in from teams to use one testing engine with results reported in one platform, gives everyone the cross-team visibility they need to prove that accessibility improvements are both sustainable and meaningful to your ideal customer.

Want to learn more about
reporting on accessibility ROI?

In our on-demand webinar, Jackie Dutot, Lead Engagement Manager, shares her experience supporting customers with data-driven strategies to secure accessibility program buy-in.

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Measure impact and optimize spend

Strategic investment management doesn’t end once funds are allocated. The most successful programs continuously show the impact of their accessibility investments through KPIs aligned to their organizational objectives. For example:

Organizational Objective	Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
Operational efficiency and cost reduction	Cost savings due to automation of accessibility work
Customer satisfaction	CSAT scores; reduction in support requests with accessibility barriers
Legal and compliance risk reduction	Number of complaints, escalations, and/or legal actions filed against the organization
Revenue growth or pipeline protection	Retention rates; new signups; (for B2B/B2G suppliers) number of RFPs mentioning accessibility and their associated dollar value
Brand trust and reputation	Referrals and engagement

These metrics should be reviewed through regular reporting cycles—often monthly at the operational level and quarterly at the executive level. Dashboards and structured reviews make it easier to spot trends, identify underperforming teams, and double down on what’s working.

Over time, this feedback loop allows organizations to shift budget toward high-performing investments and provide additional tools or services where they’re most needed.

The value of good governance: A case study

When organizations use the strategies that we’ve discussed to drive sustainable progress, their investments pay off. Take the example of Honeylove, a shapewear retailer that caters to customers of all shapes, sizes, and backgrounds. After the brand received feedback about its website’s lack of accessibility, an initial accessibility evaluation revealed a large backlog of issues. Honeylove’s development team struggled to balance remediation with new feature work—leaving the brand exposed to ongoing legal risk.

To accelerate progress, Honeylove adopted a more execution-focused accessibility approach built around clear benchmarks and measurable outcomes. By integrating accessibility tasks into existing development workflows and implementing role-specific training programs, teams reduced overhead, fixed issues faster, and prevented new ones from being introduced. This shift allowed the company to clear nearly all known accessibility issues and move toward a sustainable, proactive model where progress is tracked through remediation speed, reduced risk, and improved usability.

Like Honeylove, many organizations use structured frameworks to guide their digital accessibility evolution, identifying where they are today and what capabilities to build next.

While a deeper exploration of maturity models deserves its own discussion, the key takeaway is this: structured investment, informed by data, and reported regularly, fuels lasting impact.

Planning your 2026 accessibility investment strategy

As you plan for 2026, a simple framework can help keep your accessibility program investment focused and effective.

• Audit your current budget (even before you audit your site or digital property!): Understand where funds are going today, and what impact they’re delivering or could deliver. An inherited accessibility tool might just need some restructuring to be successful.
• Set outcome-based objectives: Define success in terms of overall business objectives, not just activity.
• Allocate funds using a priority matrix: Invest more heavily in capabilities that scale impact and reduce friction.
• Track metrics and iterate periodically: Use performance data to refine your strategy over time.

When your organization has learned how to allocate an accessibility budget effectively, it has already won half the battle. Benchmarking against other organizations in your industry will help your organization plan its digital accessibility programs for 2026 and beyond.

Access the full Seventh Annual State of Digital Accessibility Report to benchmark your investment strategy against responses from organizations across industries and regions.