Accessible Beauty: the new priority in inclusivity

The beauty industry has made great strides in embracing greater inclusivity in the past few years - from creating diverse colour cosmetics that appeal to all skin tones to offering products to cater for different hair textures, body types, gender identities and age. However, one underserved consumer group that is still being overlooked by brands is the disabled community, which makes up 15% of the world’s population.

We’re starting to see more progress happening in the industry and in particular this year, with beauty conglomerates such as Estee Lauder and L’Oréal launching disability focused products.

Beauty products and services as well as marketing campaigns that better serve this community will be the new priority in inclusivity in 2023 and beyond.

CONSUMER & MARKET INSIGHTS

The purple pound

The collective spending power of disabled people - known as the Purple Pound - is worth £274 billion to the UK economy, which represents a huge market opportunity for beauty brands to tap into this space through more accessible products and inclusive marketing campaigns.

Furthermore, in the US, according to a 2018 report from the American Institutes for Research, it found that the total disposable income (post-tax) for working age individuals with disabilities is nearly $500 billion, highlighting the high spending power of this consumer cohort.

Key stats:

• One billion people around the world live with some form of disability - that’s 15% of the global population.
• The World Health Organisation reports that there are 2.2 billion people who live with visual impairment and 39 million of them are blind.
• 50 million people globally live with limited fine motor skills.
• In the UK, more than two million people are living with sight loss, and of these around 340,000 are registered as blind or partially sighted, according to the NHS.
• 87 million Europeans have some form of disability - that’s 1 in 4 European adults.
• Globally, there are 43 million people living with blindness and 295 million living with moderate-to-severe visual impairment, according to the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness’ Vision Atlas.
• One in four American (26%) have some type of disability - that’s 61 million adults in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• 14.6 million people in the UK have a disability.
• There are more than two million people living with sight loss in the UK, with 340,000 registered as blind or partially sighted, according to the NHS.