Quick summary: Designing for people who might otherwise be excluded tends to make digital products better for everyone, from captions on a noisy train to clear forms for someone with brain fog. With around one in four people in the UK disabled and their households spending an estimated £446 billion a year, inaccessible websites and documents shut out a vast market and quietly damage trust. Simple habits such as strong colour contrast, alt text, meaningful links, proper headings and plain language let anyone who creates content remove barriers today.

Designing for people who might otherwise be excluded often makes things better for everyone. It is true in the physical world, where the phenomenon gets its name (the dropped-kerb effect), and it is just as true in the digital world. Features such as text-to-speech, adjustable text sizes and voice typing can be essential accessibility tools, yet millions of people now use them simply for convenience. So digital accessibility should not be treated as an add-on, a technical compliance exercise or something that matters to only a small group of people. It is good design and, increasingly, it is good business.

It is important to understand not only what accessibility standards say, but what those standards mean for real people using real services. At Cewri, our approach is deliberately practical. Accessibility should not sit with one expert in the corner of an organisation. Leaders need to understand it, designers need to consider it, developers need to build it, content teams need to write for it and procurement teams need to buy for it. Everyone creating digital information should have enough confidence to spot simple barriers before they reach a customer.

The organisations that grasp this now have an opportunity, and it goes beyond meeting a standard or reducing legal risk. They can create better experiences, reach more customers, strengthen their reputation and build products and services that genuinely work for the people they were made for. To get there, organisations need to move accessibility out of the compliance box and into everyday business practice.

Why should businesses care about digital accessibility?

Around one in four people in the UK is disabled. The latest Family Resources Survey estimates that 16.7 million people, 25% of the population, are classified as disabled. The spending power of disabled people and their households is often called the Purple Pound, and a recent estimate from the University of Bristol and the Money Advice Trust put its value at around £446 billion a year in the UK. That is an enormous market for businesses to exclude unnecessarily.

Those numbers only tell part of the story, because any one of us can run into barriers. You might break your arm and struggle to use a mouse. You might be holding a baby and trying to use your phone with one hand, or watching a video on a noisy train and need captions. You might be tired, stressed or experiencing brain fog and find a complicated form hard to follow, or be standing in bright sunlight, unable to read low-contrast text on your screen. Disability can be long term, but access needs can also be temporary or situational.

Everyone who creates digital content has a part to play

You do not need to be a software engineer or a developer to start making things more accessible. If you create a webpage, document, presentation, email, social media post or any other piece of digital content, start here.

• Don’t put barriers between your content and your audience: Think carefully about colour. Dark grey writing on a slightly lighter grey background might look stylish, but some people will struggle to read it, so make sure there is a strong difference, or contrast, between your words and the background. Never use colour alone to explain something either. Instead of saying “the items in red need attention”, add a word or symbol too.
• Tell as well as show: Alternative text, often called alt text, describes an image for someone who cannot see it. Imagine describing the picture to somebody on the telephone and ask what they need to know. If the image is purely decorative and adds no information, it may not need a description at all. The key question is simple: what would somebody miss if they could not see this image?
• Create links that tell people where they are going: Avoid links that just say “click here”, “read more” or “find out more”. Someone using a screen reader may move through a page by jumping from link to link, so every link should make sense on its own. Instead of click here, try book your accessibility training or read our accessibility guide. Everyone benefits from knowing what will happen before they select something.
• Use headings and subheadings as signposts: A long webpage without headings is like a book without chapters. Give your information a clear title, then use headings and subheadings in a sensible order. In documents, use the proper built-in heading styles rather than simply making words bigger and bold. Good structure helps screen-reader users navigate, and it helps everyone scan information and find what they need quickly.
• Prioritise clarity and use words people understand: Plain language is accessibility. Use familiar words, keep sentences reasonably short, explain technical terms when you need them and put the most important information first. Do not make somebody decode your organisation’s jargon before they can work out what to do, a problem that clashing jargon in learning disability services shows all too clearly. Clear writing helps people with cognitive access needs, learning disabilities and dyslexia, and people reading in a second language. It also helps anyone who is busy, distracted or simply wants an answer quickly.

None of these changes requires an enormous transformation programme. They require awareness, and once accessibility becomes part of how an organisation thinks, thousands of small decisions begin to change.

Accessibility is an investment, not a cost

Businesses increasingly need to stop asking, “How much will accessibility cost us?” and start asking, “What is inaccessibility already costing us?” An inaccessible website can lose a customer before they ever speak to you. A confusing online service can generate avoidable phone calls and support requests, and an inaccessible recruitment process can stop talented people from applying. A difficult checkout can mean an abandoned purchase. Poorly structured information leaves customers frustrated and employees spending time explaining things that should have been clear in the first place. A brand that repeatedly excludes people also sends a message, whether it means to or not, about who it values as a customer.

Accessibility can therefore contribute far more than compliance. It can improve customer experience, open products and services to a larger market, strengthen reputation and trust, reduce avoidable contact and service failures, and help employees work more effectively. It also shows that inclusion is something an organisation actually practises, rather than something written in a policy.

How accessibility helps people and search engines find you

Accessibility can also make your content easier to find. Clear headings, meaningful link text, descriptive alt text, well-structured pages and plain language all help search engines understand what your content is about. These principles matter even more in the age of AI, where search tools and AI assistants need to interpret, summarise and retrieve information accurately. Accessibility is not a shortcut to better rankings, but clear, structured and meaningful content can improve discoverability for both people and machines.

Start early, start now

If you are starting a new business or project, building accessibility in from the beginning is usually far easier than retrofitting it after something has been designed, built and launched. Whatever stage you are at, though, the sooner you begin making your digital offering accessible, the less work you will need to do to get where you need to be. Digital accessibility is not about designing for a minority. It is about designing for people, and that is something every business should be investing in.

FAQs

• What is the dropped-kerb effect? It describes how features designed for disabled people, such as dropped kerbs for wheelchair users, end up helping almost everyone, from parents with buggies to travellers with suitcases. The same happens online with captions, text-to-speech and voice typing.
• How many people in the UK are disabled? The Family Resources Survey estimates that 16.7 million people, around 25% of the population, are classified as disabled.
• What is the Purple Pound? It is the spending power of disabled people and their households, recently estimated at around £446 billion a year in the UK.
• Do I need to be a developer to make content accessible? No. Anyone who creates webpages, documents, emails or social posts can help by using strong contrast, alt text, descriptive links, proper headings and plain language.
• Does accessibility help with SEO? It is not a shortcut to better rankings, but clear headings, meaningful links, alt text and plain language help search engines and AI assistants understand and surface your content.

Joanna Goodwin is CEO and founder of Y Cewri, a Welsh consultancy, coaching and training business that helps organisations design digital products and services that work better for people and the planet. Find out more at https://www.cewri.org/.