Purple Tuesday

What is Purple Tuesday?

Purple Tuesday is an awareness day designed to support organisations who want to improve their customer service experience for disabled people and their families, carers and support networks.

Everyone who takes part is encouraged to make one commitment to making their organisation or its services more inclusive and accessible, for example organisations can commit to having disability inclusion training.

When is Purple Tuesday?

Purple Tuesday happens every year on the first Tuesday of November. In 2023, this will be Tuesday 7th November.

Why is there a Purple Tuesday?

Purple Tuesday was started because disabled people in the UK face a lot of barriers when it comes to accessing services or organisations. For example, 75% of disabled people and their families have walked away from a UK business because of poor accessibility or customer service.

Inaccessibility has a big impact because 1 in 5 potential UK consumers have a disability, so when UK organisations don’t have accessible or disability friendly services, they lose approximately £2 billion a month.

So Purple Tuesday raises awareness about the ways organisations can be more accessible to include disabled people and encourage UK organisations to take action to engage with their disabled customers.

Purple Tuesday facts you should know

Here are a few quick Purple Tuesday facts to know:

• Purple Tuesday started in 2018
• The spending power of disabled people and their household worldwide is currently estimated to be worth $8 trillion, increasing by 14% every year. Only 10% of businesses have a targeted strategy for this huge market.
• Only 8% of disabled people are wheelchair users, and 80% of disabled people have non-visible impairments.
• Purple Tuesday events will be held in the UK, USA, UAE, Southeast Asia and Pakistan.
• Purple Tuesday has ambassadors from around the world to reflect the widest community of disabled people.

How to celebrate Purple Tuesday in the workplace

There are many ways to commemorate Purple Tuesday at work, including:

• Hosting disability inclusion training.
• Using the bitesize inclusion toolkit to discuss how to make our workplaces more accessible.
• Learning more about disability and disability in the workplace with our Members’ Resources.
• Assess how inclusive your organisation is with the Inclusive Employers Standard and see what inclusion actions you could take next.
• Share what actions you have taken to make your organisation more accessible on social media using the #PurpleTuesday hashtag.
• Review your social media, website and communications channels to make sure they are accessible for all.
• Consider empowering disabled colleagues to set up an employee resource group for your organisation.
• Consider becoming a Disability Confident Employer, a scheme devised to create a movement of change, encouraging employers to think differently about disability and take action to improve how they recruit, retain and develop disabled people.

If you’re a member and need more support with celebrating Purple Tuesday Day, contact your account manager. If you’re not yet a member, get in touch today to see how we can help.