What does an inaccessible website really cost?

Does waiting really make it cheaper? 

The short answer: No. 

Of course, postponing accessibility can save money in the short term. But the work does not disappear. It is simply delayed. 

Things become much more difficult when you are no longer the one deciding when that work needs to happen – and someone else sets the timeline instead. 

The following cases show just how quickly that can happen. In some instances, companies had only 14 days to provide an initial response to the relevant authority. That was not a statutory deadline, but it gives a realistic idea of how tight timelines can become once action is required. 

And the companies were not handed a ready-made list of every accessibility barrier either. They had to identify the issues themselves and demonstrate how they planned to address them. 

Five cases – and what they could cost 

These five examples show just how much the level of effort can vary – from a single form error to a delayed launch. 

• Fashion retailer in the Netherlands: Following a market review, the company received a letter from the relevant authority – but no completed audit report. It first had to assess its own accessibility status. For this scenario, the modelled cost risk was around €235,000. 

• Banking group in the DACH region: The planned launch could only proceed once an analysis had been completed and a governance plan submitted. Around €3,000 was factored in for every day the appand website were unable to go live. The modelled cost risk was around €360,000. 

• Parcel and logistics company in Austria: The same accessibility issue resulted in two legal claims and two appointments. At around €56,000, the modelled cost was considerably lower than in the other cases – but it also shows how even a single issue can create additional work more than once. 

• Broadcasting and media company in the DACH region: A planned new system that was intended to resolve the existing issues at a later stage was not considered sufficient. The company was required to make improvements within the same year or shut down the service. The modelled cost risk: around €485,000. 

• Bank in Luxembourg: The company was required to provide a project plan covering the path to full implementation, including clear governance structures. Here, the modelled cost was around €380,000. 

Taken together, the five modelled scenarios amount to around €1.5 million. 

That does not mean businesses should generally expect costs at this level. But the figure does show how significant the additional effort can become when accessibility is only addressed once there is alreadypressure to act. 

And then there is France 

While the five examples above are based on modelled cost scenarios, the Carrefour case shows what concrete legal consequences can look like. 

The company had reported an accessibility compliance rate of 71%. The Tribunal judiciaire de Caen considered this insufficient. In June 2026, the court ordered Carrefour to make its website and app fully accessible within six months. If the deadline is not met, the company faces a penalty payment of €500 per day. 

There is an important caveat: the decision is not final. In addition, the Tribunal judiciaire de Lille reached a different conclusion in another case. 

So the case does not mean that companies in France will automatically face these exact sanctions. It does show, however, that digital accessibility is now being addressed very concretely in court proceedings.  

How should these figures be understood? 

The figures above are not fines and they are not actual invoiced costs. They are modelled estimates of the potential effort involved, using deliberately cautious assumptions. 

They include, for example, additional analysis and testing, technical remediation, documentation, project planning and governance, monitoring, and renewed evidence of compliance. 

The aim is therefore not to suggest that an inaccessible website or app has a fixed “cost”, but to illustrate the scale of additional work that can arise when several tasks suddenly need to be addressed at the same time. 

Conclusion: Why waiting can become expensive 

The five modelled scenarios highlight one thing in particular: the real cost driver is not necessarily the individual accessibility barrier, but the loss of flexibility in how you respond. 

If you act early, you can decide what to prioritise, allocate budgets and integrate improvements into existing processes. Once the pressure comes from outside, however, planned work can quickly turn into an urgent project. 

A planned relaunch or a new system further down the line may not solve the immediate problem either. What matters is the current state of accessibility and whether there is a clear, credible plan for addressing existing issues. 

That is exactly why delaying action can become expensive: not because accessibility suddenly costs more, but because there is less time to plan it properly.