What are “Reasonable Adjustments”?
Reasonable adjustments are legal changes, adaptations, or accommodations made by employers, service providers, or educational institutions to ensure that disabled individuals are not substantially disadvantaged. They promote equal access to opportunities, employment, and services.
Many business owners think that reasonable adjustments are purely about avoiding legal risk, but what they rarely realise is that accommodating the needs of disabled people can be commercially advantageous. Because adjustments that accommodate disabled people are often the same as the ones that improve the customer experience across demographics.
Why Equality is Gold Dust and not Red Tape
Take a retail environment, for example. To accommodate disabled customers, a retailer might choose to provide seating at regular intervals, logical layouts, easy-to-follow wayfinding, and wide aisle spaces. Each of these elements serve a core demographic of disabled customers but also improve the shopping experience for bloke on crutches after a five-a-side injury, the grandparent trying to catch up with grandchildren who won’t slow down, and the mother pushing their baby in a pram. For the provider, this means disabled people visiting their shop are equipped to spend money without experiencing the kind of setbacks that push them away, and for everyone else, their visit is made more pleasant and convenient.
Consider the kind of reasonable adjustments that an inclusive hotel environment might implement. The auxiliary aid at the reception desk or checkout point might have been put in to accommodate its profoundly deaf visitors, but it also means the older adults on the guestlist will be suitably accommodated. The wide pathways and corridors a hotel owner might expect that to only benefit guests in wheelchairs, is also appreciated and used by the businessman with the large luggage bags, the parent holding a child’s hand, and improve circulation for visitors walking in opposite directions.
Picture a football stadium entrance with an automatic sensor door. Though these features were originally introduced for wheelchair users, they are now the entrance of choice for the delivery driver, the manager carrying their morning coffee, and visitors with dexterity impairments or temporary injuries.
Outside the stadium, its accessible parking bays won’t just improve the experience of fans with severe mobility issues, but also carers transporting someone dependent on constant attendance, parents of children with specific mobility conditions, and older season ticket holders.
These kinds of accommodations examples of the ‘curb-cut effect’, which is a term used to describe products and design features that were originally created to serve a select few, but have become widely adopted for everyone, because they were just that useful.
When businesses embrace accessibility and view it instead through the lens of universal design, they create opportunities, sometimes quite literally, to welcome a wider range of people through the door. Doing this not only ensures that disabled customers enjoy an experience comparable to that of non-disabled customers, but it also encourages repeated visits and brand loyalty. Doing this rarely, if ever, detracts from the experience of others.
Are Reasonable Adjustments Expensive?
Many businesses believe that making reasonable adjustments come with a hefty price tag, or that accommodating disabled people is an avoidable expense. The truth, however, is that adjustments are often low-cost and deliver high-impact value, with the one exception being circumstances where buildings require extensive architectural retrofits, which tends to pay off over a longer period.
Accessible signage that incorporates braille, colour contrast, large print text and commonly understood icons, for instance, is cheap, easy to implement, and useful across industries that operate out of a physical environment.
The same can be said about moving grab bars to accessible heights in restrooms, using contrasting-colour tape to mark the edges of steps or ends of handrails, adjusting door closers so they don’t swing too fast, swapping round doorknobs for lever-style handles, and moving items to lower, easier-to-reach shelves.
Each of these can be applied at all manner of environments at a minimal cost and provide convenience for the average customer.
How Large is the Audience?
Even discounting the overwhelming evidence for the utility of universal design, there is also a growing audience of disabled people.
A report from the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions provide an insightful view of how the proportion of disabled individuals has increased, jumping from 7% to 12% for state-pension age adults, 16% to 24% among working age adults, and increasing from 43% to 45% among children. This is particularly relevant to the sports sector, whose core target audience consists of younger fans they aim to engage for a lifetime of support and stadium attendance.
Or take our earlier hospitality example. Martin Davis, Senior Director of Hotels & Leisure at Graham called accessibility “one of the biggest untapped commercial opportunities in the hotel sector”, and that it’s “impossible to ignore”. Visit Britain’s research projects support this. Last year, they discovered that tourism spending by people with access needs (and their companions) accounts for 23% of domestic overnight trip spending and 20% of domestic day visit spending in England.
Beyond that, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that customers prefer to buy from companies that support inclusivity. In 2023, McKinsey & Company published a report titled Diversity Matters, which examined public companies in the USA. Their results found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective industry medians.
And as recently as 2025, the London School of Economics reported that nearly 70% of consumers prefer companies that actively support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), with support rising to 78% among Gen Z and 74% among women.
Why Now Is the Time for Businesses to Invest
The data tells us that the value of creating a safe, inclusive environment with reasonable adjustments far exceeds the initial implementation costs.
Businesses that view accessibility as a compliance exercise will spend the next decade reacting to change. Businesses that view it as an investment, on the other hand, will help define it. And these are the types of organisations Direct Access works with.
If you are interested in creating a better environment that works for your customers, contact our team today.