The Paradox:
Digital transformation has transformed almost every organisation over the past two decades.
- Banks have reinvented the way customers manage their money.
- Retailers have invested heavily in e-commerce and self-service.
- Airlines, airports and public transport operators have introduced digital check-in, automated bag drop, digital ticketing and contactless travel.
- Healthcare providers have adopted patient portals, remote consultations and digital check-in; governments have moved everything from tax returns to licence applications online.
- Artificial intelligence is accelerating another wave of change, reshaping customer support, decision-making and the way organisations deliver services.
By almost every commercial measure, those investments have been successful. Customers can access services whenever they need them. Transactions that once took minutes now take seconds. Organisations operate more efficiently, serve more people and reduce the cost of delivering services.
So why are accessibility challenges becoming more visible instead of disappearing?
Accessibility litigation continues to rise. Governments continue to strengthen legislation. Organisations continue to discover barriers after products have been launched, and customers continue to encounter services they cannot use independently.
At first glance, those two trends appear contradictory. How can digital transformation deliver so many benefits while accessibility continues to challenge so many organisations?
We believe the answer lies in what we call the Great Accessibility Gap.
The Great Accessibility Gap exists because digital transformation has advanced faster than accessibility has become embedded in the decisions that shape digital services. New technologies have transformed the way organisations design and deliver customer experiences, while accessibility has too often been introduced after many of the most important decisions have already been made.
Over the past forty years, Storm Interface has seen accessibility evolve from physical interfaces to connected digital journeys that span websites, mobile apps, kiosks, payment platforms, identity services and artificial intelligence. As technology has become more connected, accessibility has become more strategic. It now influences procurement, customer experience, operational performance and the long-term value organisations realise from their technology investments.
Understanding how that gap has developed is the first step towards closing it.
Why the Great Accessibility Gap Exists
The Great Accessibility Gap was not created through a lack of good intentions. It emerged because digital transformation and accessibility have evolved at different speeds.
Digital transformation has been driven by customer expectations, commercial pressure and rapid advances in technology. Every few years another innovation changes the way organisations think about customer experience. Smartphones transformed customer behaviour. Cloud computing accelerated innovation. The pandemic compressed years of digital transformation into months. Artificial intelligence is now shaping the next generation of digital services.
Accessibility has progressed significantly during the same period. Standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines have transformed digital design. Accessibility has become part of software development, user experience and public policy, while legislation across the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union and South Korea continues to raise expectations around equal access.
The difference lies in when accessibility enters the conversation.
Think about a typical transformation programme.
- A retailer invests in self-service to reduce queues and improve convenience.
- A hospital introduces digital check-in to improve patient flow.
- A transport operator automates ticketing to increase capacity.
- A bank expands its mobile services because customers expect to manage their finances wherever they are.
Each of these decisions has a clear commercial objective. The accessibility questions often come later.
- Can everyone use the kiosk independently?
- Will the touchscreen work with assistive technology?
- What happens if someone cannot use voice authentication?
- Can this service be adapted without redesigning the entire customer journey?
By the time those questions are being asked, many of the decisions that shape the experience have already been made. Technology has been selected, suppliers appointed, customer journeys designed and budgets allocated. Improving accessibility is still possible, but the options are often more limited, more expensive and more disruptive than they would have been at the start of the programme.
As accessibility expert Matthijs Verhagen explains:
“When accessibility is considered at the beginning, it influences the way the service is designed. When it is considered at the end, it often becomes an exercise in adaptation.”
That observation explains much of what organisations are experiencing today. Digital transformation continues to accelerate, accessibility continues to improve, and the distance between them continues to grow. Closing the Great Accessibility Gap begins by bringing accessibility into the decisions that shape transformation programmes from the outset, while recognising that many existing services can also be improved through thoughtful retrofitting where barriers already exist.
From Products to Connected Customer Journeys
The Great Accessibility Gap becomes much easier to understand when you look at how customer journeys have changed.
Twenty years ago, a digital service often meant a single website or application. Customer journeys were relatively straightforward, and if someone encountered a problem, there was usually another way to complete the task. A member of staff could answer questions, explain the process or provide assistance. Technology and people worked together to deliver the overall experience.
Today’s customer journeys are very different.
A passenger might book a flight on their mobile phone, check in online, use an automated bag drop at the airport, board using a digital ticket, pay for food through a self-service kiosk and speak to an AI assistant if their flight is delayed. What feels like one seamless journey to the customer may involve multiple technologies, suppliers and internal teams working together behind the scenes.
The same pattern can be seen across almost every sector. A patient books an appointment online, checks in at a self-service kiosk, verifies their identity, receives updates through a mobile app and attends a remote consultation. A retail customer browses products online, collects an order in store, uses a self-service checkout and receives post-purchase support through a chatbot. A banking customer opens an account on a smartphone, verifies their identity digitally, authorises payments using biometric authentication and manages their finances through multiple connected services.
Organisations procure those technologies as individual systems. Customers experience them as one journey.
That distinction changes the way we should think about accessibility.
Customers don’t judge the accessibility of a website, kiosk, payment terminal or AI assistant in isolation. They judge whether they were able to achieve what they came to do. One inaccessible touchpoint can interrupt an otherwise seamless experience and prevent someone from completing the journey independently.
As accessibility expert Matthijs Verhagen explains:
“Customers don’t separate their experience into hardware, software and artificial intelligence. They simply ask whether it worked. Accessibility can no longer be considered one product at a time. It has to be considered across the entire customer journey.”
That shift has important implications for every organisation investing in digital transformation. Accessibility is no longer about individual products meeting technical requirements. It is about ensuring every stage of a connected customer journey works together to support independence, confidence and dignity.
As customer journeys become more connected, accessibility becomes a property of the entire experience. Every decision, from procurement and service design to software development, hardware selection and operational processes, influences whether someone can complete that journey successfully.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating the next phase of digital transformation.
Across every sector, organisations are using AI to answer customer questions, automate routine tasks, personalise experiences, support decision-making and deliver services more efficiently. These capabilities are changing the way customer journeys are designed, often reducing the need for human intervention while increasing the number of interactions customers have with digital systems.
Every new capability also introduces new accessibility decisions.
How should an AI assistant explain the recommendation it has made? How does someone know whether they are interacting with a person or a machine? What happens if a customer cannot use voice interaction? How should an AI system recover when it cannot understand a request or when it produces the wrong answer?
These questions influence trust, confidence and whether someone can complete a journey independently.
The challenge is that accessibility cannot be added to AI once the experience has been designed. Decisions about interaction models, prompts, interfaces, identity, authentication and human handovers all influence how inclusive that experience will be. As organisations embed AI into existing services, those decisions become part of the wider customer journey.
This reflects a broader shift in the role of accessibility.
In our previous article, The Three Generations of Accessibility, we described how accessibility has evolved from physical access, to digital access and now towards participation.
Participation is measured by outcomes rather than features.
- Can someone achieve what they came to do?
- Can they complete the journey independently?
- Can they do so with ease, confidence and dignity?
Those are the questions customers ask, whether they realise it or not. They are also becoming the questions organisations need to answer as digital transformation continues to accelerate.
The next generation of accessibility will be defined by the independence they enable across an entire customer journey.
Why ambitious leaders care about the great accessibility gap:
The decisions made during a transformation programme shape far more than the technology itself. They influence the customer experience, operational performance, future investment and an organisation’s ability to adapt as customer expectations continue to evolve.
Accessibility forms part of those decisions.
When accessibility is considered during the planning and design of a programme, it influences how customer journeys are mapped, how technologies work together and how services are experienced by the people who rely on them. Teams have greater flexibility, potential barriers are identified earlier, and technology investments are better aligned with the needs of a wider range of customers.
The same principle applies to existing services. Organisations can often improve accessibility by adapting and refining customer journeys, replacing individual components or removing barriers that have emerged over time. The earlier accessibility is considered, the greater the opportunity to influence the overall experience, while retrofit programmes continue to play an important role in extending the value of existing technology.
The impact reaches well beyond individual projects.
A customer who cannot complete a journey independently may require assistance from a member of staff, abandon the transaction or decide to use a different provider in future. Those outcomes affect operational efficiency, customer satisfaction and the return organisations achieve from their technology investments. They also influence how much time and resources are spent supporting workarounds that could have been avoided through earlier design decisions.
Digital transformation programmes are becoming larger, more connected and increasingly dependent on technologies such as artificial intelligence, digital identity and automation. Decisions made today will shape customer experiences for years to come, making accessibility an important consideration for procurement, service design and long-term technology strategy.
That is reflected in the conversations organisations are having today. Leadership teams are exploring how accessibility supports customer experience and organisational growth. Transformation teams are mapping journeys that span multiple technologies and suppliers. Procurement teams are considering how today’s technology choices will perform as legislation, customer expectations and technology continue to evolve. Product teams are evaluating how artificial intelligence can enhance customer journeys while remaining accessible to the people who use them.
Accessibility has become part of good decision-making. It helps organisations deliver services that work for more people, improve the value of technology investments and build customer journeys that continue to perform as organisations grow and technology evolves.
Accessibility is moving upstream
These changes are influencing when accessibility enters the conversation.
For many organisations, accessibility was traditionally considered during testing or shortly before a product was launched. Today, those conversations are beginning much earlier because organisations recognise that decisions made during strategy, procurement and service design shape every stage of the customer journey.
The starting point varies from one organisation to another.
Some conversations begin before a procurement exercise has started, while customer journeys are still being designed and technology options are being evaluated. Others begin with a review of an existing service, identifying opportunities to remove barriers, improve customer experiences and extend the value of previous technology investments. In some cases, the conversation starts with new legislation or emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence before expanding into wider discussions about customer experience, operational performance and future strategy.
Although the starting point differs, the objective is remarkably consistent.
Organisations want confidence that the decisions they make today will continue to deliver value as technology evolves, customer expectations change, and regulation develops. They want customer journeys that work effectively across multiple technologies, remain accessible to a diverse range of users and continue to support independent use as services become increasingly connected.
Accessibility has become part of strategic planning because it influences the quality of decisions made throughout a transformation programme. Every decision about technology, procurement, design and implementation contributes to the experience customers ultimately receive.
How the conversation has changed
These changes have shaped the conversations we have with our own customers.
For almost forty years, Storm Interface has designed and manufactured technology that enables people to use self-service systems independently. That experience continues to underpin everything we do. The questions our customers ask today, however, extend well beyond individual products.
They want to understand how accessibility legislation is evolving across different markets. They want to know how hardware choices influence software, how software shapes the customer experience and how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence will affect the services they are designing. They are looking for practical ways to improve existing systems while making informed decisions about future investment.
Many organisations are also involving people with lived experience much earlier in the design process. They recognise that technical compliance and real-world usability are closely connected, and that listening to the people who use their services provides insights that cannot be gained through standards and testing alone.
These conversations reflect a broader change across every sector.
Closing the Great Accessibility Gap
Digital transformation programmes are becoming more connected, customer journeys are becoming more complex, and technology decisions increasingly influence every stage of the experience. Accessibility has become part of that wider conversation because it contributes to the quality of those decisions and the outcomes they create for customers.
Storm Interface’s role has evolved alongside those changes. We continue to develop technology that supports accessible self-service, while working with organisations to understand how accessibility can be considered throughout the customer journey. Sometimes that begins with a new transformation programme. Sometimes it starts with improving an existing service. In every case, the objective is the same: helping organisations create experiences that more people can use independently, confidently and successfully.
Digital transformation has transformed the way organisations serve their customers. Services are faster, more connected and increasingly shaped by technologies that were unimaginable only a decade ago. That progress will continue as artificial intelligence, automation and digital identity become part of everyday customer experiences.
The organisations that achieve the greatest value from those investments will make accessibility part of the decisions that shape those experiences. Some will have the opportunity to build accessibility into new transformation programmes from the outset. Others will improve existing services by identifying barriers, adapting customer journeys and extending the value of the technology they already have. Every organisation has a starting point.
The Great Accessibility Gap can be closed through better decision-making. When accessibility is considered alongside customer experience, operational performance and technology strategy, organisations create services that work for more people and continue to deliver value as technology evolves.
As Matthijs Verhagen reflects:
“Digital transformation has always promised to make services easier to use. The next generation of accessibility will help ensure that promise reaches everyone.”
If your organisation is planning the next generation of self-service, we’d love to continue the conversation.
Share your self-service experience to help shape future thinking across the industry, or speak to one of our accessibility specialists about how accessibility can support your next transformation programme or help improve the services you already provide.