Small businesses in the City of London are being encouraged to treat accessibility as a commercial and operational priority, with updated research putting the annual spending power of UK households containing at least one disabled person at £446bn.
The figure was highlighted at the City of London Corporation’s Accessibility in the City event, which brought together around 200 business representatives, accessibility specialists, and people with lived experience at the Old Bailey.
The event forms part of the City Belonging Project and focused on practical changes smaller employers and service providers can make across workplaces, digital channels, customer service, and communication.
The £446bn estimate, commonly described as the Purple Pound, is based on research by the University of Bristol’s Personal Finance Research Centre and the Money Advice Trust using 2023/24 data.
It represents the potential combined spending power of households with at least one disabled person rather than £446bn of spending that can simply be captured by companies introducing individual accessibility measures.
The researchers advise caution in interpreting the number. Changes in the size of the disabled population, household circumstances, inflation, and additional costs associated with disability all affect how aggregate spending-power estimates should be understood.
The updated figure nevertheless provides a measure of the scale of the population affected when products, websites, buildings, communications, or services create unnecessary barriers.
Deputy Keith Bottomley, Sheriff of London, said: “Accessibility and inclusion are no longer peripheral issues. They are business issues and issues of opportunity and whether people feel that a place, organisation, product or service is genuinely open to them.”
The commercial consequences can appear across customer and employee relationships.
For customers, accessibility can involve physical access, websites, payment processes, written information, telephone support, product design, and the way employees respond when somebody requires an adjustment.
A business may have an accessible building but still lose customers because its website cannot be navigated using assistive technology. Another may provide strong digital accessibility but create barriers through complex communications, inflexible customer-service processes, or inaccessible events.
For smaller companies, the challenge is often less about a single large accessibility programme than incorporating inclusive design into routine operating decisions.
Website updates, recruitment processes, office refurbishments, procurement, customer communications, and the introduction of new software can all create additional barriers or remove existing ones.
The employment case is similarly broad. Workplace adjustments can widen recruitment pools and help organisations retain employees who acquire a disability or long-term health condition during their career.
Flexible working, accessible meetings, appropriate technology, and clear processes for requesting adjustments can influence whether employees are able to contribute effectively without unnecessary friction.
That connects accessibility with productivity and retention as well as compliance. Replacing experienced employees can carry recruitment and training costs, while poorly designed systems can force people to spend additional time navigating processes that could have been accessible from the outset.
Digital accessibility is becoming especially significant as customer and employee journeys move through websites, applications, automated systems, and AI-supported services.
A company can reduce physical barriers while inadvertently creating new digital ones if online forms, authentication systems, chat interfaces, or documents are difficult to use with screen readers, alternative input devices, or other assistive technology.
Smaller companies may also depend on third-party platforms rather than systems they build themselves. Procurement therefore becomes part of accessibility management because a software choice can determine whether employees or customers can use a service effectively.
The City event covered workplace adjustments, flexible working, communication, inclusive meetings, digital accessibility, and customer service, reflecting the way accessibility runs across functions rather than sitting solely with HR or compliance teams.
The Purple Pound estimate should not obscure the financial pressure experienced by many disabled households. University of Bristol research notes that potential spending power is an aggregate measure and does not imply that disabled consumers uniformly have high disposable incomes.
The commercial case for accessibility consequently does not depend on treating disabled people as a homogeneous market segment or assuming every improvement will produce a predictable revenue return. It rests on reducing barriers that can prevent a sizeable group of customers and employees from participating on equivalent terms.
For SMEs, some of the most practical changes include testing digital services with disabled users, reviewing customer communications, making adjustment processes clearer, ensuring suppliers understand accessibility requirements, and involving affected employees or customers when processes are redesigned.
The £446bn estimate puts a scale around the potential market involved. The commercial impact for individual companies will depend on how consistently accessibility is built into product, workplace, procurement, and customer-experience decisions.
You must be logged in to post a comment.