The value of the purple pound

What the purple pound actually is

The term describes the collective spending power of disabled people and the households they belong to. It was coined to make a market visible that most businesses weren’t treating as one, in the same way “the pink pound” did for LGBTQ+ consumers.

The number itself has a traceable history. In August 2014 the Department for Work and Pensions put UK disabled households’ spending power at £212 billion a year. The independent Extra Costs Commission used that same figure in its 2015 report. From around 2020 onwards, marketing and charity content began citing £274 billion instead, usually attributed to “DWP data” with no dataset or year named. A University of Bristol estimate puts the figure as high as £446 billion, using a different method again.

None of that means the underlying point is wrong. It means the specific number isn’t something to quote as if it were audited last month. If you use it in your own marketing, say where it comes from, or use the figures below instead, which you can check and refresh yourself.

How many people we’re actually talking about

The Family Resources Survey, run annually by the DWP, is the main UK source for disability prevalence. In 2022/23, the most recent year published, 16.1 million people in the UK reported a disability, around 1 in 4 of the population. That share has risen steadily, from 19% in 2012/13 to 24% now, and it climbs with age: 45% of people over state pension age report a disability, and 58% of people aged 80 and over.

That’s not a niche audience. It’s a quarter of everyone who might land on your website, and disabled people rarely browse or buy alone. A day out, a booking, or a purchase usually involves family, friends or a carer, so the number of visits affected by whether your site works is larger than the headcount alone suggests.

Disability also isn’t only visible mobility impairment. Hearing loss, low vision, chronic pain and fatigue conditions, and neurological and cognitive differences such as autism, dyslexia and ADHD are all covered by the term, and most of them have no outward sign at all. A site that only considers wheelchair access is planning for a small part of this group.

What Parliament actually found

In March 2024, the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee published “Accessibility of products and services to disabled people” (HC 605), following an inquiry into exactly this. Its verdict on the private sector was blunt: many business websites continue to fall short of what disabled consumers need, and businesses treat accessibility as an afterthought rather than building it in from the start. It also looked at flat bank cards, phased-out embossed cards and accessible food packaging, three everyday examples of design decisions made without disabled customers in mind.

The Government responded in May 2024, accepting the importance of digital inclusion and confirming that inclusive design should be the default, not an add-on. That’s not new law, but it’s a cross-party committee of MPs, using recent evidence, reaching the same conclusion an accessibility audit reaches on a single site: the barriers are usually avoidable, and businesses built them in by not thinking about it early enough.

Two sector-specific numbers worth having

Away from the headline figure, two narrower numbers are properly sourced and dated, and more useful because of it.

• Tourism: VisitBritain estimates total tourism spending in England by disabled visitors, and groups travelling with a disabled member, at £14.6 billion a year (2024/25 data), and that removing access barriers could add a further £1 billion. This is specific to tourism, not the whole economy, but if you’re in hospitality or travel it’s the more relevant figure.
• Online shopping: the Click-Away Pound survey, from 2019, found that 4.3 million disabled online shoppers had clicked away from a website they couldn’t use, taking an estimated £17.1 billion in spending power elsewhere. It’s the most-quoted digital figure in this space, but it is now several years old, so treat it as evidence of a real, long-standing pattern rather than a current total.

What this means for your website

You don’t need to accept any specific billion-pound figure to accept the underlying point: a quarter of the population reports a disability, that share is rising, and a Parliamentary committee has recently said business websites generally aren’t built with them in mind. Every barrier on your site, a form a screen reader can’t complete, a menu that traps keyboard focus, contrast too low to read, is a point where some share of that quarter simply leaves.

An audit doesn’t just find those barriers. It gives you a dated, specific answer to “how much of this market are we currently shutting out”, in place of a statistic nobody can verify.

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