Web Accessibility: The Missing Piece In Your Martech Stack
Marketing leaders understand the power of personalized, data-driven campaigns to boost customer engagement, drive pipeline, and build brand loyalty.
Modern marketing technology (Martech) has made it easier than ever to optimize and scale marketing campaigns — helping teams reach key business goals like improved conversion rates, greater customer lifetime value, and higher SEO rankings.
However, there’s a crucial element many martech stacks are missing: digital accessibility.
Accessibility isn’t just a legal box to check — it’s a competitive advantage and a business accelerator. In this guide, we’ll show you how integrating accessibility into your martech stack can help you:
- Optimize every customer touchpoint for accessibility and engagement.
- Support key marketing metrics, including SEO, conversions, and brand loyalty.
- Differentiate your organization with compliance and best-in-class experiences.
We’ll also provide guidance on what to look for in a digital accessibility solution, including key features and questions to ask.
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Optimize Your Martech Stack With Accessibility
Marketing teams today rely on various tools to deliver effective, scalable campaigns. Today, your Martech stack likely includes:
- Analytics platforms to track user behavior and measure campaign performance.
- SEO tools to monitor search ranking and organic traffic.
- Marketing automation to nurture leads and deliver personalized user experiences across multiple channels.
- CRO tools to optimize user journeys, test messaging, and boost conversion rates.
Done right, Martech stacks create an environment where tools and teams work better together. For example, landing pages perform better when you can use CRO tools to A/B test everything from headlines to form placement — all while using SEO to drive high-intent organic traffic.
However, accessibility barriers can disrupt this synergy — turning optimized experiences into frustrating roadblocks for people with disabilities. An inaccessible form can impact the conversion rate for a high-performing landing page. A checkout form that is not accessible for keyboard-only users can lead to abandoned carts and lost sales.
To maximize the ROI of every campaign, accessibility must be integrated into your overall marketing strategy.
“If your website isn’t accessible, you’re losing customers. And even if it’s technically accessible but a real pain … you’re probably still going to lose some customers.”
Christy Smith, Digital Accessibility Advocate
Four Reasons Accessibility Should Be a Priority for Marketers
There’s an old saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”
The idea was popularized by John F. Kennedy, who suggested that investing in economic development would benefit everyone who participated in that economy. However, one could also apply it to the impact of accessibility on website performance.
PRO TIP
Web accessibility is designing websites and digital experiences so people with disabilities can easily navigate, consume, and engage with the content.
When we talk to companies about the benefits of web accessibility, we usually mention that prioritizing accessibility can support other key marketing priorities — from driving more organic traffic to improving brand perception.
Here are some of the benefits of plugging an accessibility solution into your martech stack:
1. Accessibility Expands Your Audience
When talking to organizations about accessibility, we sometimes get responses like, “Oh, we don’t have customers with disabilities.”
Wrong!
Every organization has customers with disabilities, whether they realize it or not. Over 1.3 billion people globally live with some type of disability — making the disabled community one of the largest audience segments in the world. In the United States alone, 1 in 4 adults has a disability.
By failing to invest in accessibility, organizations miss out on the chance to tap into this audience, who often describe themselves as fiercely loyal to companies prioritizing accessibility.
PRO TIP
If you’re struggling to build support for accessibility in your organization, ask people to consider what it would mean for your business if 25% more prospects could fill out a contact form, complete a purchase, or find the information they need on your website.
2. Accessibility Improves Key Marketing Metrics
The primary goal of digital accessibility is to ensure equal access for all users, but it can also positively impact other marketing KPIs. Here are three secondary benefits of accessibility:
- Increase conversion rates: In the United States, 1 in 4 adults has a disability that can impact how they navigate websites. Accessibility barriers can turn seemingly simple tasks — like navigating between pages or filling out forms — into frustrating roadblocks, adding friction to the customer journey.
- Increase engagement across channels: Accessibility ensures that every touchpoint — from the first ad click to the final conversion — is optimized for all users, increasing engagement, reducing friction, and making every marketing dollar work harder.
- Appear higher in search results: If you compared a list of accessibility best practices and a list of SEO best practices, they’d look almost the same. For example, clear and concise headings work better for search engines and screen reader users, who often jump between headings to build a mental image of a page’s content.
3. Accessibility Future-Proofs Your Brand
When we talk to marketing teams about accessibility, we sometimes hear, “It’s not a priority for us right now.”
That mindset can be risky. In recent years, accessibility laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and European Accessibility Act (EAA) have introduced new accessibility requirements and deadlines — and the number of web accessibility lawsuits continues to rise.
By integrating accessibility into your marketing processes, you can start to get ahead of these compliance deadlines — while benefiting from increased engagement and loyalty from people with disabilities.
As you evaluate different accessibility solutions, ask about the depth of their automated testing — especially as it relates to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Most accessibility laws use WCAG as a technical standard for digital accessibility compliance, but not all solutions are created equal. Be sure to prioritize a solution that regularly expands its WCAG coverage to test for more accessibility issues automatically.
“People with disabilities tend to be more loyal consumers. We will stick with companies that go out of their way to make us feel welcome.”
Maxwell Ivey, AudioEye A11iance Advocate
4. Accessibility Differentiates Your Martech Stack
It doesn’t matter how much data you have on a customer’s preferences or how well you’ve optimized an email subject line for open rates — if someone with a disability can’t access or engage with your content, you’re not optimizing your marketing efforts for all audiences.
By embedding accessibility into your Martech stack, you help ensure that every tool — from analytics to CRO — works effectively for all users. As an added benefit, making accessibility an organizational priority sends a clear message: We care about every customer. And that commitment can translate into stronger engagement and better brand loyalty.
Key Considerations When Evaluating Accessibility Solutions
Marketers need an accessibility solution that fits seamlessly into their existing workflows and technology stack — while delivering the scalability and precision needed to deliver accessible, compliant experiences. Here’s what to prioritize:
1. Scalability for Dynamic Campaigns
Marketing moves fast. Your accessibility solution should, too. Websites and digital campaigns constantly evolve, with new pages, forms, and interactive elements added regularly. However, each update presents the risk of accidentally introducing new accessibility issues that can negatively impact user experiences and marketing KPIs.
The best accessibility solutions offer real-time, automated testing and fixes — ensuring that common accessibility issues are identified and eradicated before they can impact users or campaigns. However, you should also prioritize solutions that offer some element of custom accessibility testing since automated solutions cannot test for every accessibility issue.
DID YOU KNOW?
AudioEye's automated accessibility platform scanned for accessibility issues ~40 trillion times in 2022 — and automatically remediated over 685 billion issues over that span.
Learn About AudioEye's Automated Accessibility Platform
2. Actionable Insights for Marketing KPIs
Digital accessibility doesn’t stop at issue identification. You also need an efficient, scalable way to actually fix accessibility issues. Many solutions generate long, technical reports but, without the ability to track, prioritize, and resolve issues efficiently, those insights don’t translate into real improvements.
As you evaluate different solutions, prioritize ones that provide:
- A clear breakdown of accessibility issues, including severity, frequency, and where they appear on your site.
- Context on how each issue affects user experience and compliance so teams know which fixes to prioritize.
- Insights that connect accessibility improvements to marketing performance, making it easier to track the impact on SEO rankings, conversions, and engagement.
3. Ease of Integration
Your accessibility solution shouldn’t operate in isolation—it should seamlessly integrate with the tools your team already relies on, such as analytics platforms, CRMs, and marketing automation software.
When accessibility insights are siloed — or worse, captured in PDF reports that rarely get shared outside of a small group — they can be easily overlooked, making it harder to prioritize fixes that have the greatest impact on compliance and user experiences.
The best solutions provide real-time issue tracking and reporting, giving teams a clear view of the following:
- Where accessibility issues exist on your site
- How severe they are
- How many instances are there
- How to fix issues that require custom fixes
By plugging into your existing analytics and reporting tools, accessibility insights can be managed alongside broader marketing and performance data — making it easier to connect accessibility improvements to KPIs like conversion rates and SEO performance.
DID YOU KNOW?
AudioEye’s Active Monitoring processes over 2,000 requests per second — fueling our pipeline of real-time insights and reporting for customers.
Learn About AudioEye's Active Monitoring
4. Ongoing Support and Compliance
Accessibility isn’t a one-time fix — it’s an ongoing commitment.
Websites and digital marketing campaigns are constantly evolving, and each update is a chance to accidentally introduce new accessibility barriers. Without a proactive strategy for accessibility compliance, it can be almost impossible to fix old issues or identify new ones before they impact users — and marketing results.
To stay ahead, you need a solution that adapts as your site evolves. Look for one that offers:
- Continuous monitoring to catch new issues before they impact users.
- Automated updates that keep accessibility up to date as your site evolves.
- Expert support to help solve complex accessibility challenges unique to your business.
Making the Business Case for Accessibility
Even if you put aside the ethical and legal reasons to prioritize accessibility, there are plenty of purely business-related reasons to ensure everyone can interact with your brand online. Here’s how you can make the business case for accessibility within your organization:
1. Frame Accessibility as a Growth Driver
Think about all the time and money you invest in paid search, SEO, email nurture sequences, home page updates, and social media campaigns. Now imagine that 25% of your audience might struggle to fully understand or interact with that content if it’s inaccessible.
What kind of impact would that have on your bottom line? Or on the KPIs you’re accountable for, like pipeline generation, cost-per-lead, and customer lifetime value? How would your leadership team react if you told them your big campaign might miss 25% of your target audience?
2. Tie Accessibility to Key Marketing Metrics
Improving accessibility boosts SEO rankings, increases conversions, and reduces friction in key user journeys, while a seamless experience keeps visitors engaged, lowers bounce rates, and minimizes legal and financial risks.
3. Make Accessibility an Enabler, Not a Barrier
With the right approach, it fits smoothly into existing workflows without slowing teams down. Automated fixes, real-time insights, and expert support keep compliance effortless, so marketing teams can stay focused on performance and growth.
DID YOU KNOW?
AudioEye customers saw a 67% reduction in valid lawsuit claims when using AudioEye’s full suite of accessibility testing tools and Expert Audits, compared to other industry solutions.
Learn About AudioEye's Expert Audits
Ready To Put This Guide To Use?
Choosing the right accessibility solution takes time. This guide will help you compare different approaches and understand how accessibility impacts many of the performance metrics and business goals you’re responsible for as a marketing organization.
Schedule a meeting to learn more about how AudioEye’s combination of industry-leading automation and human expertise can help organizations improve accessibility and compliance.
