You are turning away paying customers
About one in five Canadians has a disability — that is millions of people who vote with their wallets like everyone else. When your site is hard to use with a screen reader, impossible to navigate by keyboard, or has text too faint to read, you are not making an abstract compliance error. You are quietly turning away customers who arrived ready to buy, along with the friends and family who shop on their advice. These people do not email to complain that your form was unusable; they simply leave and go to a competitor whose site worked. An accessible site widens the door instead of narrowing it, and that is revenue you were otherwise leaving on the table.
Accessible sites are just better sites
Here is the part that surprises people: nearly everything you do for accessibility helps every visitor and helps your search ranking too. Clear headings and logical structure make a page easier to skim for everyone, and they are exactly what search engines and AI assistants use to understand and cite your content. Good colour contrast helps a sighted customer reading on their phone in bright sun. Descriptive links and captions serve people in a noisy room or a quiet office. Fast, clean, well-structured pages are the shared foundation of accessibility, usability, and SEO — you are rarely paying for one benefit at a time.
The downside you avoid
Then there is the risk you quietly retire. Accessibility law in Canada is tightening — the Accessible Canada Act federally, provincial regimes like the AODA in Ontario and the Accessible BC Act, and rising expectations everywhere. Building accessibly now is far cheaper than retrofitting under pressure later, and it protects you from the complaints and reputational hits that land on businesses seen to be shutting people out.
Add it up and the case is not really about charity or fear. A wider audience, a site that works better and ranks better for everyone, and less risk down the road — that is simply good business. Building sites that are accessible from the start, rather than bolting it on afterward, is a core part of what I do at Design Menu, and I have never seen it hurt the bottom line.