Accessibility Fixes That Help Every User

In the 1970s, disability advocates fought to get curb cuts added to sidewalks in Berkeley, California. The idea was simple: people using wheelchairs couldn't get off the curb. The cuts would fix that. City officials resisted. They thought it was a niche accommodation for a small group of people, and probably not worth the expense.

Then the curb cuts went in. And something unexpected happened.

Everyone used them. Parents with strollers. Delivery workers with carts. Cyclists. Travelers with rolling luggage. People carrying groceries. Elderly pedestrians who found the step painful. The accommodation designed for one group turned out to be better for almost everyone. Today we call this the curb cut effect, and it shows up everywhere, including on the web.

The Web's Curb Cuts

Think about what accessibility improvements actually look like in practice, and then think about who benefits.

Bigger click targets. WCAG recommends minimum touch target sizes of 44x44 pixels. This was added to the spec because small targets are difficult to activate accurately for people with motor impairments. But a 44px button is also much easier to tap on a phone screen when you're on a moving bus, or when your hands are cold, or when you're just not paying close attention. Mobile users, which is most of your traffic, benefit directly from this accessibility requirement.

Captions on video. Captions were designed for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. But the majority of videos on social media platforms are watched on mute. Office workers watching a tutorial at their desk without headphones. People in waiting rooms. Commuters on the subway. Anyone whose phone auto-plays without sound. Captions designed for accessibility turn out to be table stakes for the modern video experience.

Good contrast ratios. The 4.5:1 contrast requirement in WCAG exists because low-contrast text is illegible for people with low vision or color vision deficiencies. It's also legible for everyone trying to read their phone in direct sunlight. Try reading light gray on white at the beach sometime. The WCAG requirement isn't just for people with disabilities. It's for everyone in less-than-ideal lighting conditions, which is most people, most of the time.

Keyboard navigation. Keyboard accessibility is required so that people who can't use a mouse, whether due to motor impairments, tremors, or assistive devices, can still navigate sites. But power users love keyboard shortcuts. Developers navigate almost exclusively by keyboard. Anyone who's ever tabbed through a form because clicking each field individually felt tedious has benefited from accessible keyboard navigation. Well-structured keyboard navigation makes your site faster and more pleasant for anyone who prefers it.

Clear, simple language. Plain language guidelines, often included in accessibility frameworks, help people with cognitive disabilities, users who have reading challenges, and people who aren't native speakers of your language. They also help everyone. Dense, jargon-heavy content loses readers. Clear content keeps them.

The Checkout Study

Here's an illustrative example. In a widely cited case study, a checkout flow was redesigned according to WCAG guidelines: larger targets, clearer labels, better error messages, logical focus order. After the redesign, the team reported that form errors dropped significantly across all users. Not just users with disabilities. Everyone made fewer mistakes and completed the checkout more successfully.

That kind of improvement translates directly to revenue and conversion rates. While exact results vary by implementation, it illustrates the broader business case for accessibility work.

This is the part that I think gets lost in conversations about accessibility compliance and legal risk. Those are real concerns, and worth taking seriously. But the business case for accessibility doesn't require you to care about compliance at all. If fixing accessibility meaningfully reduces checkout errors, it pays for itself. The legal protection is a bonus.

Designing for the Edges Improves the Center

There's a design principle here that goes beyond accessibility. When you design for the most constrained user, you usually end up with something that works better for everyone. A screen with no visual clutter is easier to parse for a user with a cognitive disability, and it's also just a cleaner, better screen. A form with clear error messages helps someone with an anxiety disorder and also helps the impatient user who mistyped their email and can't figure out why the form won't submit.

The curb cut was designed for wheelchairs. It became infrastructure everyone depends on. The same thing happens on the web, every time we bother to do accessibility right.

SCOUTb2 checks 25+ WCAG criteria in seconds and can help surface common areas where your site may need attention. It's free, and you might be surprised how many of the issues it flags are things that are frustrating your non-disabled users too. Consider running a scan on your homepage to see what comes up.

The curb is already there. You're just deciding whether to cut it.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, professional, or compliance advice. SCOUTb2 is an automated scanning tool that helps identify common issues but does not guarantee full compliance with any standard or regulation.