The presentation is now available for download in English or German under a Creative Commons license, so you can re-use material as long as you quote me.

Let’s face it: all of us have heard the phrase “blind people are not our target group,” either from clients or colleagues. There are a few noble souls who actually care about other people’s needs, but business is mostly about money.

So I explained how businesses lose money by ignoring accessibility. Because accessibility is not only about blind people: it’s about color blind, about old people, young people with learning disabilities, or people who are not fluent in a language. Fundamentalists will deny, but there’s also a close relation to device independence.

You may decide to ignore “a few disabled,” but you cannot ignore half of the population: accessibility is becoming a social and economic imperative.