Accomplishing universal access through system reachability—a management perspective

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to describe the need of a method by which we can estimate the return on accessibility investments in information technology (IT) systems. This paper reveals some of the reasons why accessibility still is a secondhand criterion when designing digital services. It also describes the authors’ experiences regarding the concept of accessibility and how it must develop in order to obtain the status of a basic business criterion for the benefit of disabled people who are currently excluded from public services and labour markets. The paper also questions the need of a separate accessibility standard. Additionally, we discuss some of the hindering in the market and limiting perspectives that are blocking further development. One of the problems in the market seems to be that accessibility as a concept has been more of an issue about creating equal opportunities and therefore probably does not have the quality of a business criterion. In order to bridge that gap, we argue for replacing accessibility with reachability, which is a concept based on a measure used by media when estimating the reached percentage of a population or target group.