In today’s digital-first world, accessibility isn’t optional. Every statement, invoice, or policy you send must be accessible to all customers, including those with visual, cognitive, auditory, or motor impairments.

Yet many organizations still treat accessibility as a last-minute fix. The result is documents that look fine on screen but fail completely when someone uses a screen reader or tries to navigate with a keyboard. Critical information gets buried, customers feel excluded, and businesses take on unnecessary legal and reputational risk.

Why accessibility matters

This is about more than compliance. In the U.S., the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 508 require digital accessibility. In Europe, the European Accessibility Act is coming into force. Falling short puts organizations at risk of fines, lawsuits, or lost contracts.

But the real impact is on customer trust. Imagine receiving a renewal notice or bill you can’t understand. The frustration isn’t just with the document; it’s with the company that sent it. Over time, that erodes confidence and loyalty.

Accessibility also has scale: over a billion people worldwide live with some form of disability. Building communications that work for them isn’t just ethical, it’s good business.

Why so many organizations struggle

Accessibility often fails because it’s treated as an afterthought. A document is created first, then sent to be “fixed” later through remediation. That’s slow, expensive, and error-prone.

Another issue is awareness. Many teams simply don’t know how their documents behave in real-world use. They assume a PDF that looks polished visually must work for everyone, when in fact, it may not.

A better way forward

That’s why more organizations are looking to build accessibility directly into their document generation processes, using standards like PDF/UA (Universal Accessibility), the global benchmark for accessible PDFs. Instead of relying on fixes after the fact, organizations can generate accessible documents directly as part of their workflows.

With PDF/UA, accessible documents are designed to:

•  Contain proper headings, tables, and lists so screen readers read them correctly.
•  Allow keyboard navigation to jump quickly to key information.
•  Avoid common pitfalls like hiding payment details inside images or untagged form fields.

This means accessibility isn’t an extra step, it’s built in.

The bigger benefits

Compliance is the obvious gain, but the advantages go further:

•  Customers gain independence and can act on communications without help.
•  Businesses save time and cost by avoiding remediation.
•  Every customer gets the same clear, professional experience.
•  Brands show they value inclusion and digital responsibility.
•  Accessibility is built in, not bolted on.

Inclusion, compliance, and customer confidence should never be optional. By adopting accessibility standards like PDF/UA and embedding them earlier in document workflows, organizations don’t need to choose between design and usability. They can deliver both.
And when accessibility is built in from the start, customer communications work better for everyone—that benefits all of us.

Objectif Lune’s OL Connect technology helps companies optimize their business communication processes with robust document composition and automation tools. Speak to one of our experts to see how OL Connect is evolving to support accessibility-ready communications.