The business case for accessible services.

Why accessibility matters

• Participation

  Services should be usable independently.

  Everyday tasks are increasingly digital. Customers need to open accounts, make payments, manage savings, review insurance and pension information and complete transactions on their own.

  Every unnecessary barrier, whether an inaccessible authentication step, a form that cannot be completed with assistive technology or a statement that cannot be read, moves a customer from acting independently to depending on someone else.

• Quality

  Accessibility is part of product quality.

  Accessible forms, authentication, navigation, content, statements, calculators and interaction patterns make complex services easier for everyone. We do not claim accessibility automatically increases conversion. The honest link is that accessible products tend to share the foundations of usable ones.

• Commercial perspective

  The Purple Pound.

  In the UK, “Purple Pound” describes the spending power of disabled people and households that include a disabled person. One widely cited estimate puts it at approximately £274 billion (Purple, 2020). This figure is specific to the UK market and should not be extrapolated to Denmark, the Nordics or the EU.

  The point is not to treat disabled people as a segment to target. Accessibility barriers have a real commercial cost, and removing them is both right and commercially sound.

• Customer lifecycle

  Remove barriers to becoming a customer.

  Barriers can occur at any point, often long before anyone reports them.

  • Discovering a service
  • Understanding a product
  • Onboarding
  • Identity verification

  • Completing forms
  • Making transactions
  • Receiving documents
  • Ongoing self-service
• Trust

  Inclusion can strengthen trust.

  Accessible experiences show that a broader range of customers has been considered. For regulated, public-facing or high-trust organisations this can reasonably support a more inclusive brand perception, a modest and credible claim rather than a guarantee of loyalty.

• Perspective

  From compliance to product quality.

  Accessibility should not be viewed only as the cost of meeting a requirement. Built into product development, it becomes part of creating robust, usable and inclusive services.