According to the UK’s Office for National Statistics, 12.7 million people in the UK have some form of physical or mental health condition or illness that has lasted or is expected to last 12 months or more, and which reduces their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.

However, accessibility is about more than official definitions of disability or impairment. It’s about having the skills to access services. For example, to use a contact centre effectively you need to be able to speak and hear on the phone – or use a text-to-speech device. You must have a good memory and the ability to understand text or verbal directions and respond to them within a time limit. You need to be able to articulate your needs clearly, and be able to type on a keyboard, keypad, smartphone, or tablet.

To do all this, you need to be able to hear, to speak, to have a certain amount of dexterity for typing. You also need a functioning memory, intellectual processing capability, linguistic ability and language comprehension.   

So what about UK residents who have settled from other countries, for whom English is not their first language? Many of them have limited proficiency, which is a clear barrier to effective communication with most UK-based contact centres.            

Government statistics on disability also don’t include people over 65, meaning they underestimate the likely total number of citizens with accessibility skills gaps by anything up to four million people.

When you add all these groups together, the total number of UK citizens with accessibility skills gaps reaches 18.4 million – or more than 1 in 4 of the UK population.