Legacy Accessibility Companies are Quietly Losing Clients
As it turns out, deceiving, pressuring, overcharging, and underdelivering are bad for business.
For years, digital accessibility companies have padded their revenue by exploiting a lack of consumer education — a knowledge gap many of these same companies actively contributed to through deliberate market confusion.
The primary result: buyers paying astronomical prices for farmed-out accessibility audits of varying quality.
These companies bundle an audit with an automated scan, a hugely inflated block of technical support hours, and a drawn-out onboarding process designed more to justify the price than serve the client. They wrap it all in a bow and sell it for $15,000 to $20,000 as a starting point.
When clients finally see what’s behind the curtain, the impressive-sounding sales pitch and polished PowerPoint lose their luster in retrospect.
The problem for these legacy players is that word spreads. As clients research and talk with others, they start to realize how lopsided their terms were. It’s kind of like when you tell someone the deal you got on your new car and they look at you in stunned silence.
Clients are discovering the amazing compliance “platform” is a repackaged scanner. They’re learning that they could have purchased their $15,000 audit for $3,500. They’re finding out that the legal support isn’t actually legal support.
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And once that trust erodes, it doesn’t come back.
The companies that built their business on information asymmetry are now facing a market that’s rapidly educating itself. Buyers are asking harder questions.
- They’re asking why a block of 30 technical support hours is needed for a single project.
- They’re asking why the company is selling a widget when accessibility professionals unanimously say they’re bad.
- They’re asking why so many website owners have been sued with widgets already installed.
- They’re asking why they should use a scan platform to track progress when scans only flag 25% of issues.
- They’re asking why they need a subscription when the accessibility company is supposed to be helping with…well, accessibility.
The old playbook — create fear, razzle and dazzle during a sales demo, gloss over the details, and lock clients into long-term contracts — is failing. What’s replacing it in the market is transparent, reasonably priced service offerings that deliver on quality.
The good thing about operating a competing accessibility company is clients tell you all of this intel freely — usually while explaining why they’re never going back.
