Businesses spend enormous time understanding customers.
They track behaviour. They study preferences. They measure conversion. They reduce friction. They build loyalty. They fight for share of wallet.
But there is one customer segment many businesses have barely understood: persons with disabilities and their households.
The result is not only exclusion.
It is lost revenue.
Imagine a family planning a holiday. One member uses a wheelchair. They search for hotels, but the accessibility information is vague. “Wheelchair friendly” could mean anything. They call the hotel. The staff is unsure. The bathroom photos are missing. The entrance has steps. The booking is abandoned.
That is not just a bad experience.
That is lost business.
Now imagine a person with a visual impairment trying to use a banking app that is not screen-reader friendly. They may need help for something they should be able to do independently. Trust drops. Usage drops. The customer moves away or becomes dependent on offline support.
That is lost engagement.
A deaf customer wants to attend a live event. There is no captioning, no interpretation, no accessible information. They do not book. Their friends may not book either.
That is lost ticket revenue.
A parent of a child with a disability searches for inclusive learning support, therapy, assistive devices, transport, parent guidance and digital tools. The need is real, but services are scattered, expensive or hard to verify. The family spends time, energy and money navigating uncertainty.
That is a market waiting to be organised.
This is the share of wallet businesses failed to see.
The Purple Economy asks companies to look again.
Persons with disabilities are not a small “special case” segment. They are part of households, communities, workplaces, schools, travel groups, entertainment audiences, digital users and financial systems. Their choices influence family purchases, institutional decisions and brand trust.
Accessibility is therefore not only a compliance cost. It is a customer strategy.
When companies design better journeys for persons with disabilities, they often improve the experience for many others — older customers, pregnant women, injured people, children, first-time users, travellers, caregivers and anyone facing temporary difficulty.
The question for business is simple: how much revenue is being lost because products, services and environments were not designed to include?
The Purple Economy does not ask businesses to be charitable.
It asks them to be observant.
There is demand in plain sight.
The market has simply failed to see it.
