Does complying with accessibility guidelines offer any significant general benefits other than improved usability?
Yes. Web sites redesigned for accessibility have been shown to deliver worthwhile ROI via improved marketing performance (see qu. 5). Although implementing accessibility involves initial investment, the result can be significant cost savings as a by-product of improved usability and technical factors, especially where large volumes of documents are involved. For example, Dutch government sites experienced volume reductions of up to 60% by using validated, accessible code, with consequent reductions in server load and bandwidth. Changing a web site can also cost less once CSS has been adopted, as changes are then made via style sheets rather than by multiple changes embedded in individual HTML pages. CSS entails separation of content from its presentation, which has other business and development advantages for example, other websites and media, e.g. a site for mobile phone users, can access the same content as browser users. Search engine robot software can also access and index access
