A strong business case helps gain buy-in from stakeholders and can make accessibility a departmental priority. What is a business case? It may only be a “stockpile” of arguments or elevator pitches that you use as you make your case, or it could be a project business case based on standard documentation, or a report or position paper. Regardless, the aims are that through your arguments being tailored to your department, you can gain buy-in, set accessibility as a priority, and ideally aim to obtain financial support. What’s relevant to explore in the business case will vary between institutions. In the next slides I’m going to highlight a few different angles. We’ve already mentioned accessibility features can be considered customisation features. In online meetings, it’s likely that someone has asked for a screen share to be made larger. This is dependent on the application reflowing, which of course is Level AA accessibility Success Criterion. Our business case can explain the benefits both of our services following accessibility guidelines, and how explaining these benefits to our users can help raise their effectiveness and digital literacy. Whilst we should never diminish the experience of those with permanent disabilities or impairments, we will find ourselves dealing with a temporary impairment such as a broken arm, or a situational impairment such as using our device in a bright light. As the W3C says, “accessibility is essential for some, but useful for all”. Following accessibility best-practices will help to maximise the potential of our investment in online services for everyone. The most common issues reported to our Occupational Health teams relate to vision, hearing, and dexterity. Occupational health teams may focus more on physical adjustments and may not be aware of the benefits of accessibility features.  As we communicate the benefits of accessibility they will have more awareness of cost-free methods to assist staff. Many accessibility features could be thought of as “dormant” within the computers of our colleagues. There is lots of potential. Simple techniques such as having your email read aloud to you or knowing how to turn on dictation features can benefit many. Reviewing your institution’s access and participation plan may help you to identify disability disclosure trends and how the outcomes of students with a disability vary compared with those who do not.  If your IT department is not already part of these plans it could be an untapped resource for realising the institution’s access and participation goals. For example at Southampton, our plan has an aim of reducing non-continuation rates and closing the progression and attainment gap. So much of the University experience is digital, so accessibility can play an important part. Of course, most would agree that ensuring our services are accessible is the “right thing to do”. Or even just “the thing to do” – if we weren’t testing the accessibility of our services before, our work was not complete. I wonder whether University staff and students just assume that their IT department is doing this already, because we are professionals. As well as benefiting our staff and students, implementing accessibility has development benefits for our IT staff. There is a growing demand for IT staff who are competent in accessibility.  And this will only increase. The European Accessibility Act comes into force in the EU from 2025 and expands accessibility requirements into numerous commercial sectors.Companies that wish to sell into these sectors within the single market will have to meet accessibility guidelines, and this can only lead to an increase in demand for these skills. Of course, most will have become aware of the requirement for accessible digital services through the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 which I will now refer to as “PSBAR”. But it’s difficult to make this a strong part of your business case in terms of reducing the financial risk of enforcement. Whereas GDPR has a large maximum fine for infringements. This isn’t comparable with PSBAR. Failure to comply with the accessibility regulations, could result in an Equality and Human Rights Commission investigation, a discrimination claim by injured party, or reputational damage.