Compliance with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and conformance to the ICT Standards and Guidelines are more than legal obligations—they are strategic investments that reduce financial risk, streamline operations, and improve service delivery. Proactive integration of ICT accessibility minimizes costly litigation and remediation while enhancing IT modernization. At both the organizational and individual levels, accessible technology boosts productivity, reduces barriers, and creates a more efficient workplace.
The following sections provide rationale for the business case, illustrating how accessibility investments could result in improvements. Specific figures for how to explicitly estimate productivity savings will vary widely by agency, type of mission, and leadership engagement, among other considerations. These cost considerations provide a general sense of potential impacts and may vary based on agency size, operational structure, and implementation strategies. For a business case tailored to your agency, use your agency’s actual data rather than rely on more general estimates.
Legal and Financial Risk Management
Adhering to Section 508 law is a proactive risk management strategy that reduces legal exposure, minimizes costly remediation, and improves overall agency efficiency. Specifically, it helps agencies:
Minimize Section 508-related complaints and reduce legal risks.
- Organizational Impact: Fewer Section 508-related complaints lead to reduced processing costs. This could include reduced labor hours across various agency roles, including time spent by legal teams, Section 508 staff, and other personnel involved in gathering information and addressing complaints.
- Individual Impact: The time spent handling a single complaint by Section 508 staff, legal teams, and IT personnel could be avoided by providing accessible products from the start.
- For additional guidance on identifying and mitigating Section 508 risks, please refer to the Risk Matrix & Example Risk Factors.
Avoid costly litigation, settlements, and reputational damage.
- Organizational Impact: Defending a Section 508 lawsuit can incur significant costs for an agency in legal fees, administrative costs, and related expenses. Engage with your agency’s general counsel’s office or equivalent to determine the average direct cost of an ICT accessibility-related lawsuit and how many are experienced each year.
- Individual Impact: Lawsuits require extensive time from agency attorneys, accessibility specialists, and senior leadership. This is costly both in terms of actual costs, but also the opportunity costs, meaning that these types of avoidable adverse actions take away from lawyers allocating their time to other mission critical efforts such as compliance improvements, accessibility innovation, and user support, among other efforts. Regardless of the outcome, reputational damage will occur as a result of Section 508 lawsuits being filed against an organization. Each additional lawsuit will add to that damage.
Reduce the need for expensive remediation efforts later in the technology lifecycle.
- Organizational Impact: Remediating accessibility issues after a system is deployed can significantly increase costs and disrupt ongoing operations. Post-deployment remediation of hardware or software typically requires substantial resources. Addressing accessibility proactively during the design and development phases of all ICT can substantially reduce or even eliminate these expenses.
- Individual Impact: Fixing accessibility issues post-deployment consumes extensive developer time. Creating accessible products from the outset allows teams to dedicate more time to innovation, new feature development, and strategic activities.
Strategic Benefits of Investing in Section 508
Beyond risk mitigation, Section 508 compliance is a strategic investment that helps agencies:
Advance Agency Goals and Objectives.
- Organizational Impact: Section 508 compliance supports IT modernization, user adoption, and customer satisfaction.
- Individual Impact: Employees with better-designed, accessible tools are more productive, allowing them to create more and better products and services for customers.
- Workforce Impact: An accessible enterprise environment expands the pool of qualified candidates agencies can recruit and retain, strengthening workforce capabilities and resilience.
Improve Service Delivery and User Experience.
- Organizational Impact: Accessible technology improves the usability of government information across different platforms and devices, making it easier for both employees and the public to engage with digital resources.
- Individual Impact: Some users must call an organization’s customers service an average of once per week or more because of accessibility issues. Thus employees with disabilities could spend multiple hours per month troubleshooting accessibility barriers. This time could instead be allocated to mission-critical tasks, innovation, or strategic improvements. Additionally, improved accessibility allows employees and the public to interact with government services more easily across mobile devices, assistive technologies, and automated systems, reducing barriers to information access.
Enhance Operational Efficiency.
- Organizational Impact: Digital accessibility streamlines workflows and reduces inefficiencies.
- Individual Impact: If accessible platforms and tools are used and result in increased efficiency, this would optimize existing staff resources and allow them to spend time on other efforts.
Broader Benefits of Section 508 Compliance
To learn about the broader benefits of Section 508 compliance—beyond the budgetary focus of this guidance—and practical strategies for implementing accessibility across your agency, visit Practical Reasons for Digital Accessibility: The benefits of digital accessibility and the risks and drawbacks of inaccessible content.
