So, my name is Leighanne Higgins and I'm a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Lancaster University Management School.

My work on disability access to marketplace and commercial settings began in 2015 - 2016.

I wanted to understand what were the barriers to access to commercial settings for persons with disabilities, and as part of that I travelled with a wonderful charity called The Jumbulance Trust.

There were so many things that the people I was working with couldn't do and were reliant and needed assistance with.

But there were these beautiful, creative ways that they expressed their sense of self. and I just thought, how great would it be if instead of us doing the traditional interview, we actually heard their experiences or saw their experiences through the way that they actually express their sense of self through their creative talents. And also, in doing that, I thought that way we're prioritising ability over disability. We're not looking at what they can't do, we're looking at what they can do and we're prioritising that, and from that, we can learn about commercial experiences and how the marketplace could actually change to better include persons with disabilities.

It's hugely important that we address marketplace accessibility issues, and the reason for that is there is 1 billion people, approximately a billion people, which is 15% of the world population, who are actually registered as disabled. So that's a huge part of the world.

It's actually the largest minority group that we have.

From a financial perspective, it's hugely important. The purple pound, which sort of shows the disposable income of persons with disabilities, that's estimated at £7 trillion across the world. And within the UK, it's estimated that the disposable income of persons with disabilities is £249 billion. So that's a huge amount of money that the marketplace and commercial settings could be tapping into.

But further from that, we're also seeing that a lot of people are going to be transitioning into disability due to COVID, due to the pandemic, and due to the fact that we're an aging demographic.

We're all temporarily able-bodied, that's what Dan Goodley, within Disability Studies says, because we all are going to suffer sort of bodily deterioration as we age.

So disability is something that marketplace and commercial settings really do need to think about and marketplace accessibility is a huge area that really is deserving of marketing and company attention.

So in terms of how retailers can improve marketplace accessibility for persons with impairment and their family members, there's lots of different ways that they can do it.

Quite often through sort of regulations such as the DDA or the ADA in America, we see that there are regulations where they have to have ramps, where they have to have elevators, where there has to be sort of disabled access.

But I think the biggest thing that companies really need to focus on is seeing the person behind the disability, knowing who to talk to and knowing how to interact with persons with disabilities.

I think that's the core thing, that we need to see the person behind the disability and work out how companies can really try and embrace the person over the disability.