The employers winning the competition for talent are not always the ones offering the highest salaries. The winners are the organisations removing the barriers that keep skilled people out.
Nearly one in four working-age adults is disabled. An employer whose hiring doesn’t account for them is competing for a shrunken pool of candidates and wondering why it’s hard to fill roles.
In the UK, around 10.4 million working-age adults identify as disabled. Their employment rate, however, is roughly 52%, compared with 82.5% for non-disabled people.
While the Disability Employment Gap exists for many reasons, most employers miss out on talent by not accommodating their needs.
These accommodations are called “reasonable adjustments”, and while they are a legal requirement, they have historically been implemented at the employer’s discretion.
And when they have chosen not to, they unintentionally block skilled candidates when they could instead be unlocking ways to increase talent and widen access to untapped customer markets.
What is a “Reasonable Adjustment”?
Under sections 20 and 21 of the Equality Act 2010, businesses in the UK have a legal duty to ensure that employees are not placed at a disadvantage when working for them. Reasonable adjustments are the changes they make to remove or reduce workplace barriers related to a person’s disability or health condition.
The adjustments depend on specific individual needs. They include things like adjusting work hours, providing split-height desks for people with dwarfism, screen readers for visually impaired employees, or ergonomic chairs for people with back pain or joint hypermobility.
Other examples include auxiliary aids in meeting rooms following recognised accessibility standards for accessible parking provision, giving visually-impaired employees the option to receive letters, menus, or bills in accessible formats, and permitting entry to assistance dogs.
Anything that ensures a disabled employee receives a similar standard of experience to that of a non-disabled person fits the bill.
Why Do Businesses Struggle to Reasonably Adjust?
Despite being broadly understood in concept and a legal requirement, many businesses struggle to implement reasonable adjustments.
It’s not always bad faith. A lot of managers just wait for someone to tell them they’re disabled or only sort a problem out once it’s flagged. But it’s the wrong way round, you’re meant to spot the barriers and deal with them before anyone has to ask.
In the most severe cases, they delay, ignore, or simply decide not to promote equal opportunities to begin with. They opt for avoidance because they overestimate the cost, fear the risk of ‘getting it wrong’, or fear a customer or employee raising a complaint that could sink their business into legal red zones.
Regardless of the reason, ignoring the needs of millions of people does not serve any business’s bottom line; it weakens the ability to attract talent and customers and to compete in a society that values convenience and inclusion. It’s both commercially and reputationally damaging.
Why Should Employers Care?
Implementing accessible building practices and considering your customers’ needs is not an expense; it’s the foundation of long-term sustainability and success.
Businesses that embed accessible practices, on the other hand, have the potential to outperform their peers by gaining access to the Purple Pound, which is currently worth £446 billion in the UK alone.
Supporting data from trade unions and government organisations in both the UK and the U.S. demonstrates that implementing a robust accessibility policy is often low cost and can contribute to improved employee retention, stronger employer reputation, reduced workplace disputes, and more effective use of HR resources.
In the U.S., a Job Accommodation Network (JAN) survey of 3,528 employers reported that workplace accommodations for disabled employees improved employee outcomes. Among those who provided accommodations, 85% said they helped retain disabled employees, and 53% reported increased productivity.
Separately, the U.S Department of Labour reinforced these findings by announcing that the median expenditure for making reasonable adjustments for an employee amount to only $300. Also, nearly 50% of workplace modifications require zero financial investment, typically involving simple adjustments to schedules or task distributions.
In the UK, Business Disability Forum reported that the average cost of reasonable adjustments for an individual can be as little as £75, although many are in fact free, because accommodating disabled people doesn’t always involve making expensive structural changes; simply allowing disabled employees to adjust how and where they work is all the effort needed.
How Accessibility Attracts Top Talent
If employers want to be best placed to attract talent from a wider pool of candidates, we recommend integrating accessible design into your business regardless of individual staff needs.
That means allowing candidates to interview in a way that best suits them, and providing accessible application systems, accessible job advertisements, and a publicly available accessibility policy.
Many disabled professionals have already made up their mind about a company before they even consider making contact. They check websites, social media, and application processes and quickly make a judgement call about the whole company. And if the accessibility approach doesn’t impress them, they bounce.
Embedding a strong accessibility policy and building on it is the solution to this problem. That means making it apparent that your business provides disability awareness training to customer-facing colleagues, that you’re integrating WCAG 2.2 compliant design features on your website, and that you have an up-to-date policy document listed.
These are all factors that not only strengthen a company’s reputation for inclusivity and convenience, but they also drive both disabled talent and customers directly to you.
An aerospace firm that supports hybrid working is in a much better position to attract candidates from a larger talent pool, including wheelchair users and neurodivergent individuals, than a competitor that refuses to do so.
Equally, a consulting firm that provides no alternative to an open-plan office space, such as a quiet room or closed environment, will struggle to convince an autistic data analyst to accept any vacant position.
These are just a couple of examples of how making provisions for the diversity of the human experience is a competitive advantage, and a tool to meaningfully increase commercial performance.
Why Now is The Time to Upgrade Your Accessibility
The law protecting workers’ equality has tightened to the point where the new reality of employer-employee dynamics can no longer be ignored.
In May 2025, a bill was introduced requiring UK businesses to respond to reasonable adjustment requests within a set deadline, closing a loophole that historically allowed them to delay responding indefinitely.
The Employment Rights Act 2025 also introduced a new employer liability for third-party harassment and will largely ban non-disclosure agreements relating to discrimination.
The organisations most positioned to thrive under these new standards will be the ones that put accessibility first, for their staff and their customers.
At Direct Access, we help business owners both meet their existing obligations and prepare for incoming legislation requirements in relation to reasonable adjustments by facilitating sustainable and actionable accessibility policies.
Through a combination of specialist expertise and lived experience, we help our clients in attracting talent outside the usual scope and maximise their growth prospects through our staff training, accessibility policy, and accessibility auditing services.
Get in touch today whether you’re starting your accessibility journey or wanting to refine your approach.
As we mentioned earlier, reasonable adjustments don’t just help business owners attract candidates, they even help you attract customers. You can read more about that here.