Julie Howell, director of accessibility at Fortune Cookie, says that when one financial services company made their website easier for disabled people to use, there was a 300 per cent increase in the take-up of one of their products.

She comments: ‘Something that was borne out of the research is that websites that are accessible, people who don’t have disabilities perform far better on them.’

‘There’s also a moral responsibility – it is just the right thing to do,’ Howell adds.

According to the government’s guide to accessible websites, an accessible site allows disabled people to ‘perceive, understand, navigate and interact with websites’.

The Office for National Statistics’ Labour Force Survey found that in 2006 nearly one in five people of working age in the UK are disabled.

Vast potential

Businesses whose websites are not accessible to disabled people are missing out on a ‘vast potential market’, according to a web consultancy.

There are some eight and a half million disabled people in the UK, three and a half million of which are not able to use a conventional keyboard, e-consultancy reports.

In total, such a group can make up a significant number of potential customers for small online businesses, says researcher for the group Graham Charlton.

He explains: ‘The key thing is that if your website is not accessible to these people, you are missing out on a vast potential market.’

Charlton adds that often the same factors which make a website accessible to disabled people – clear text, labelled images, html copy rather than images of copy – also appeal to search engines.

This means that a company with a more accessible website is more likely to come up highly in search engine rankings and be visible to a larger number of internet users.

Having an accessible website is also required by law. This is because it is defined as a service provided by a business and must therefore be available to disabled internet users.

See also: 5 ways to make your website more friendly for older customers