Inclusion means big bucks and smart business

As someone who’s been tirelessly advocating for the inclusion of people with disabilities in the digital space for over 20 years, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to explain that accessibility is a lot more than just a business expense. As the old saying goes, if I’d been given a dollar every time that someone had justified their inactions towards accessible content and more inclusive by arguing that “people with disabilities have no money”, well, let’s just say I’d be much closer to financial independence than I am today.

“Blind people are not interested in computers”.

“People with disabilities are not part of our audience”.

“Seniors hate computers and can’t use technology”.

“Of course, everyone knows how to use the web”.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, I know what my audience wants”.

In fact, when it comes to people with disabilities, the elderly, or anyone marginalized by the way we create, share and communicate information, the very heterogeneous group of people with disabilities represents a much bigger market than any of us truly realize. If we collectively did, the digital landscape would look a hell of a lot different for those who currently struggle with what the rest of us takes for granted.

According to data from the American Institutes for Research (AIR), working-age Americans with disabilities collectively control over $504 billion a year in after-tax, disposable income. More research, this time conducted by Oxford Economics and reported by Forbes, shows that Americans over the age of 50 already account for $7.6 trillion in direct spending and related economic activity annually while controlling more than 80% of household wealth. Along the same lines, Bank of America Merrill Lynch projected, back in 2018, that the global spending power of those age 60-plus will reach $15 trillion annually by 2020. Who knows how much they would now estimate it to, four years later?

Why would any business choose NOT to tap into that? I’d argue that people with disabilities and the elderly are markets that are not only ripe for the taking, but ones that are, by far and large, literally untapped!

At $504 billion annually, the community of people with disabilities is right up there with other communities any senior executive in their right mind would never consider not marketing to, such as the Black community, which collectively controls about $501 billion annually, or the Latinx community, which controls about $582 billion per year.

I’m always baffled when savvy, but short-sighted business people play the “accessibility and inclusion are nice but too expensive to really care about” card. In fact, in light of all of this data, I’d argue that one of the smartest business decisions any organization can make would be to focus really hard on making their content, products and services accessible to those who are traditionally marginalized by inaccessible content, products and services…

Can you imagine a prosperous business choosing NOT to market to the Black or Latinx communities, because their market “just isn’t worth the hassle, the time, the energy”? Yet, this is exactly what most organizations unconsciously choose to do, when they are choosing not to tap into the disability market.

Meanwhile, in Canada…

This is not just true for the United States; it’s a trend that can be reliably observed all around the world, particularly in industrialized countries.

Back in 2017, the Ontarian Chamber of Commerce estimates the after-tax disposable income of Canadians with disabilities to be at around $55 billion annually. When you think that the population ratio between the U.S and Canada is roughly 9 to 1, we can see that Canadian data aligns nicely with American data.

Knowing this, it doesn’t seem far-fetched at all to extrapolate that the proportional discretionary spending power of Canadian seniors aged 50 and older could easily be estimated at least $190 billion annually. As it turns out, recent data from Statistics Canada actually informs us that the annual disposable income of Canadian seniors was over $218 billion in 2019!

If it was only the money organizations were leaving on the table as a result of not paying attention to this untapped market, it would be bad enough. But the real dramatic impact of inaction is the lost opportunities for those who are limited in the way they can contribute to society because of how we communicate, as well as the contributions we, as a society are losing because these same people are systematically left out of the conversations.

If you believe these numbers to be reason enough for your business to pay attention to inclusion and accessibility moving forward, then let’s get in touch. We could begin by putting together a business case around digital inclusion for your audience. Ou might be surprised about how much your business is leaving on the table each year.

This will help you better understand the power that people with disabilities and the elderly collectively could have on your bottom line, and the kind of impact you could exercise on the market, if only these people were properly accounted for. It’s time organizations wake up to this reality, and I hope you business will be among the first to reap the benefits.