One of the reasons sometimes cited for why Web Accessibility is a necessary and useful thing is that it makes websites more usable for everyone. This week, I finally found two studies that support this argument. A 2016 study by Sven Schmutz et al. (link) had 61 participants without disabilities use three different versions of a website – one that wasn’t accessible at all, one which was partially accessible, and one that was fully accessible according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The study measured the amount of time it took people to complete tasks, and found that they took significantly faster to complete tasks on the accessible page. People generally found the accessible website to be the most usable, aesthetically pleasing, and trustworthy – and found it the least amount of work to use.

The same set of authors did a similar study in 2017 which added a group of people with vision impairments to the mix. Interestingly, the study found that both nondisabled and visually impaired users benefited equally from web accessibility. This fact really excites me, since it offers concrete, academic proof to the idea that accessibility is for everyone, not just people with disabilities.