The Accessibility ROI One-Pager for Budget Officers
Your IT director already believes in this project. The person who needs convincing is whoever signs the budget line. Here's the version of this argument written for them.
A budget officer doesn't need to know what WCAG 1.4.3 requires. They need two numbers: what happens if we do nothing, and what it costs if we do this right. Everything below is built around those two numbers.
1What Doing Nothing Actually Costs
Web accessibility lawsuits aren't rare anymore, and they don't stay small. Settlement and remediation costs tied to a single complaint have run well past $100,000 once legal fees, forced remediation under a tight court-ordered timeline, and monitoring requirements stack up. A resolution agreement with a federal civil rights office adds its own cost: a mandated timeline, periodic compliance reporting, staff training records, and a monitoring period that can run a year or longer.
$100K+
Typical cost once legal fees and forced remediation stack up on a single complaint
1+ year
Typical monitoring period attached to an OCR resolution agreement
2-5x
How much faster remediation costs when it's done under a court deadline versus on your own schedule
2What Doing It Right Costs Instead
A platform built around accessibilityfrom the start runs as a predictable line item, not a crisis budget request. A small township can run a fully compliant site for under a hundred dollars a month. A mid-size city typically lands well under the cost of a single contracted remediation project, and that cost doesn't disappear after launch. It recurs every time a new page or PDF goes up, which is exactly why a platform that enforces compliance at publish time keeps paying for itself instead of becoming next year's budget ask all over again.
3What This Costs, by Jurisdiction Size
Budget officers ask for a number that fits their specific agency, not a national average. Here's the rough shape of it.
| Jurisdiction size | Proactive monthly cost | Reactive cost after a complaint |
|---|---|---|
| Township or special district, under 10,000 | Under $100/month | $30,000-$80,000 in legal and remediation costs |
| Small city, 10,000-50,000 | $200-$500/month | $75,000-$150,000, plus a monitoring period |
| Mid-size city or county, 50,000-250,000 | $500-$1,500/month | $150,000-$350,000, often with a multi-year resolution agreement |
Figures are directional, built from typical remediation and settlement ranges we see across agencies this size. Your own number depends on PDF archive size and how much of the site is custom-built versus templated.
4Where the Money Actually Goes
A budget line labeled "accessibility compliance" is vague enough that it gets cut first in a tight year. Break it into what it actually buys, and it's harder to argue against.
Platform or hosting fees
The recurring cost of a CMS or plugin layer that enforces WCAG rules automatically at publish time.
Document remediation
One-time or ongoing cost to tag, OCR, and fix the PDF archive, usually the single largest line item in any agency's first year.
Staff training
A few hours a year for the people who actually publish content: forms, PDFs, images, and press releases.
Legal and compliance review
Periodic review of the accessibility statement, policy, and procurement language, often absorbed into existing counsel time rather than a new cost.
5The Risk-Adjusted Way to Frame This
A budget officer who deals in risk, not just cost, responds to a different framing than a straight price comparison. Multiply the rough cost of a complaint by the likelihood your agency faces one in a given year, and compare that expected cost against the proactive monthly line item. For most agencies sitting on an untested PDF archive and no accessibility statement, that expected cost already exceeds the proactive spend by a wide margin, which is the actual argument, not just "this is the right thing to do."
6The Three-Sentence Version for a Council Meeting
"Our website has to meet federal accessibility standards by April 2027 or 2028, depending on our population. Fixing this proactively costs a predictable monthly amount. Fixing it after a complaint costs several times more, takes longer, and comes with a mandated public timeline we don't control."
Get the Actual Number for Your Agency
See current WPPersona pricing by jurisdiction size, or talk through the numbers with us directly before your next budget cycle.
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