Did you know that accessibility improves digital performance?
Did you know that accessible websites are often faster, easier to navigate, and perform better in search engines? Many accessibility improvements overlap with performance, usability, and clarity. When done well, they support speed, engagement, and discoverability, without requiring separate initiatives or competing priorities across teams.
Why this keeps happening
Accessibility is often treated as a parallel effort. Performance and search get their own strategies. Teams optimize in silos. Leadership reinforces this separation through structure and metrics. As a result, shared benefits stay hidden, even though the work often overlaps in practice.
What this signals
This pattern signals how value gets fragmented. Improvements are credited to one goal while quietly supporting others. Accessibility remains invisible because its impact blends into broader outcomes. When success is measured narrowly, its contribution is rarely named or noticed.
Why this matters to leaders
When leaders miss these connections, they underestimate return on investment. Opportunities for alignment slip by. Decisions feel like trade-offs when they are not. This is not a prioritization problem. It is a visibility problem across outcomes leaders already care about.
Where leaders encounter this
This often appears during performance reviews, optimization initiatives, and search strategy discussions. Accessibility goes unnoticed when gains are attributed to isolated improvements rather than shared design choices.
Closing reflection
Accessibility is not separate from performance. It reinforces it.
What benefits might your organization already be gaining without recognizing their source?
Take the Inclusive Leadership Self-Assessment Test
If you’re curious to see where your organization sits on the Digital Accessibility Maturity Model – and what that means for your next leadership decisions – you can take a short, leadership-focused survey to find out.
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About Denis Boudreau
Denis Boudreau is a consultant, trainer, and speaker specializing in digital accessibility and disability inclusion. He works with organizational leaders who want to equip their teams with the skills to create accessible websites and digital products – so no one is left behind. A Certified Professional in Web Accessibility (CPWA), Denis has trained thousands of web professionals over the past 20+ years and delivered hundreds of workshops in both English and French. He has helped leading brands like Netflix, Salesforce, and Victoria’s Secret embed accessibility into their digital strategies, empowering them to meet legal obligations, improve user experience, and connect with more people, more effectively.