What is the Purple Pound?

In the UK, people with disabilities and their families are estimated to spend £274 billion a year. The Purple Pound is a term used to describe the collective spending power of consumers with disabilities. According to Scope, 1 in 4 people in the UK are disabled with just over a third of households in England and Wales having at least one person with a disability.

Given that there is a substantial number of consumers with disabilities in the UK, the Purple Pound is powerful. Yet many businesses and charities are missing out on their spending power.

Why businesses are missing out on the Purple Pound

It’s not just businesses with a physical presence, such as a pub, restaurant, or supermarket, which are missing out on the Purple Pound due to being inaccessible – it’s online businesses too.

The Click-Away Pound report 2019 found that four million people with disabilities clicked away from a website that wasn’t accessible to them, costing UK businesses £17.1 billion.

Accessibility is the right thing to do. But it also makes business sense. According to research by Accenture in 2023, businesses that lead on disability inclusion make 1.6  times more in revenue, and 2 times more economic profit than businesses who don’t prioritise accessibility and inclusion.

What does the Purple Pound have to do with charities?

If 25% of the UK population has a disability, they will be involved in your charity in some way. Perhaps they use your services, seek advice online, volunteer, donate, or fundraise. But just how inclusive and accessible is your website, services, and events?

Here’s some ways in which you can ensure that people with disabilities are included and that barriers to access your website or events are removed.

Make your donate page accessible

Your donation page is most likely mobile responsive but how accessible is it? Michael Wilkinson, former Associate Director for Digital and Innovation at RNID and now Product Director at Torchbox, believes that having accessible digital services, including donation pages, is not just a legal responsibility, but a fundamental aspect of inclusivity.

“During my time leading digital at RNID, we recognised early on that making our website accessible was crucial to not only reaching a wider audience but also in honouring our mission for inclusivity.”

They focused on building their website with accessibility at its core, rather than treating it as an afterthought. Wilkinson’s number one advice for charities is to design for people around the edges, because you make the user experience better for everyone.

“For charities looking to enhance the accessibility of their donation pages, I recommend starting with a few key practices. First, using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) as a guide and ensuring you meet at least the 2.1 AA standards.

“This includes providing text alternatives for non-text content, making all functionality available from a keyboard and making sure that users can easily navigate and find content. If you’re using video content in your donation pages, make sure they are subtitled.”

Wilkinson also encourages people to regularly review their website’s accessibility, using automated tools, testing with users, and working with a partner to conduct an audit. “This helps identify and rectify accessibility barriers that might not be obvious at first glance.”

Finally, Wilkinson suggests adopting inclusive design practices to ensure that digital spaces are usable and welcoming to all, including people with disabilities, older individuals, and those with temporary impairments.

“Making your donation page accessible not only enables more people to make a contribution but it empowers everyone to participate fully in the philanthropic space.”

Embed accessibility into your events

When organising events, are you putting accessibility at the fore? Not only should the venue be accessible for wheelchair users or people with mobility issues, for example, but the tech you use at the event should be accessible too. Showing a video? Make sure it’s captioned. Hosting a gala dinner in a large venue? Ensure there is a hearing loop system for people with hearing loss.

Ensure your social media is accessible

One of the easiest ways to reach more people with disabilities is through social media. But only if your social media content is accessible. This means adding captions to videos, adding alt text to images and GIFs, not using too many emoji, using Camel case for hashtags, and more.

RNIB shares social media accessibility tips on their social media channels. They have also written a Social Media Etiquette for Accessibility guide for CharityComms, which has a wealth of accessibility tips.

Be inclusive

Are people with disabilities reflected in images on your website or social media? If not, why not? No matter what your cause, you will have service users, supporters, campaigners, or volunteers with disabilties. They should be able to see themselves reflected in your content. And it’s not just visual content, your language should be inclusive too.

Find out more

Our 2024 Digital Inclusion Summit revealed how charities can help can make the digital world a safer, happier, more inclusive place, from improving access to digital devices to demystifying cyber security. Click here to watch the session recordings for free.

Our report, ‘Digital inclusion in the UK charity sector’, uncovers charity practitioners’ attitudes towards digital inclusion, including the challenges charities face in reaching out to service users and how they are making the most of the digital technology they use. Click the link in the orange box below to download the report.

Our Digital Inclusion Hub features regular articles, podcasts, and webinars to help charities reach across the digital divide. Click here to learn more.