Not Every Supplier Who Says "Accessibility and Inclusion" Actually Means It

You can listen to the newsletter here:

Between the Equality Act 2010 gaining traction and the European Accessibility Act arriving in 2025, an industry has formed around “accessibility.” Some is excellent; much is not. If you’re a procurement manager, DEI lead, or accessibility manager seeking value, you’re navigating a market with terrible signal-to-noise. This is about telling the difference before you sign the contract.

The growing demand for accessibility services has attracted a category of suppliers that I’d describe as “accessibility hindering.” They know the vocabulary. They can spell WCAG. They will tell you they’re “inclusive” in the first thirty seconds of the call, but if you ask them about the social model, they go blank or tell you something about social care.

They often can’t explain what it’s like to board a train in a wheelchair, how wheelchair boarding works at airports, or what happens when screen readers encounter poorly structured tables. Nor can they show how a good website functions or why requiring complaints for “reasonable adjustments” is unreasonable.

This matters because accessibility work that isn’t grounded in lived experience and the social model of disability tends to deliver outputs that look great on paper but fail in real life. A training programme that is based on the medical model of disability, on pity and being patronising and medical, isn’t just useless, it’s actively harmful. A website redesign that passes an automated accessibility check but has never been tested by a screen reader user is a legal liability in disguise.

The problem is structural. As accessibility has moved up the corporate agenda, driven by legislation, litigation risk, and the slow but real shift in public expectations, the number of suppliers claiming expertise has grown far faster than the number that actually have it. There’s no regulated professional standard for “accessibility consultant” in the UK. Anyone can print it on a business card.

I’ve seen it so often: an organisation invests heavily in disability awareness, completes training, reports it, then nothing changes. The training focused on awareness, not change, and was delivered by people who never faced disabled people’s daily barriers.

The first question to ask any training provider isn’t about their methodology, their delivery model, or their client list. It’s this: who are your trainers, and what is their direct experience of disability? Direct, not second-hand.

The best disability equality and accessibility training is delivered by disabled people. You need trainers who live with the barriers you’re asking staff to understand, not just those who know medical terms or conditions. Knowledge and experience are different things, and the gap between them is exactly where training tends to go wrong. Disabled trainers can answer questions non-disabled people can’t.

A training provider who states that their trainers are “very experienced” or “have worked extensively with disabled people” without addressing whether any of them are disabled deserves a follow-up. Being very experienced in working with a community is not the same as being part of it. This is what “Nothing About Us Without Us” actually means in practice: not as a slogan on a website, but as a procurement criterion.

Beyond who delivers the training, look hard at what it produces. Good disability equality training doesn’t finish with people feeling educated and vaguely well-intentioned. It ends with specific behaviour change: staff who know what to do differently and managers who understand their legal obligations under the Equality Act 2010 (or any national legislation).

Beware training that is only a one-off or an online module without a trainer present. Real learning about accessibility is a conversation, an activity, and something memorable. It needs to be revisited as the organisation evolves and as disabled people’s needs develop.

The other thing that makes me genuinely uneasy is training that relies heavily on “disability simulation” exercises like blindfolds, earplugs, wheelchairs for an afternoon. The research on these is pretty clear: they tend to increase pity and anxiety, not empathy and competence. They centre the non-disabled participant’s temporary discomfort rather than the disabled person’s actual experience. A good provider won’t lead with these, and if you ask them about it directly, they should be able to explain why they use or don’t use them and what the evidence says. Disability simulation is a clear sign that something is off. Equality starts with listening to and believing disabled people, not putting them in a wheelchair for an afternoon and clapping when participants manage the 1cm step at a convenience store.

Finally, and this is where it gets uncomfortable, ask about the provider’s own organisation. How many of their staff are disabled? That’s not just important for training providers; that’s important for every supplier that provides anything aimed at or used by disabled people. Go to disabled owned businesses. It often saves you a lot of trouble in the first place.

The digital accessibility space has a specific pathology that has gotten noticeably worse over the last few years, and it has a name: the overlay.

Accessibility overlays are widgets that sit on top of a website. It’s a small piece of code, a floating toolbar, and suddenly, according to the sales pitch, your site is compliant. They have names that sound reassuring. They have case studies. They have, in some cases, invested heavily and allocated significant marketing budgets. They don’t work.

The US Federal Trade Commission reached a $1 million settlement with an overlay company in 2025, finding it had misled businesses by marketing its widget as a guaranteed compliance tool. More than a thousand lawsuits were filed in a single year against companies using overlay tools, not despite using them, but partly because of them. Overlays often create new barriers for screen reader users by applying layers of interface that interrupt navigation. They don’t fix the underlying code. They put a cosmetic veneer over structural inaccessibility and call it done.

Any web design agency that responds to your accessibility brief by recommending an overlay or by describing automated scanning tools as the basis for their compliance work is not an agency with genuine digital accessibility expertise. Automated tools are useful starting points. They can reliably catch certain categories of error. But they catch, at best, around 30–40% of failures. The rest requires human judgement, and crucially, testing with disabled users.

A credible web design agency builds user testing with disabled people into their process as standard. If their proposal doesn’t mention it, ask directly. If their answer is vague or relies solely on automated tools, walk away.

Under the UK’s Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations, public sector websites must meet certain standards. Under the Equality Act 2010, private sector organisations have a duty to make reasonable adjustments, which, in practice, means delivering accessible digital services. With the European Accessibility Act now in force across EU member states, organisations trading across borders face a converging set of requirements. Inaccessible websites exclude disabled people. That is the point, and it should be the driver, not just the compliance risk.

So, after identifying common pitfalls, what are the key qualities of a good (web) agency?

They will have accessibility embedded from the beginning of a project. They will have a clear position on overlay tools. Ask them. Any hesitation or hedging tells you something.

They will be able to explain WCAG 2.2 success criteria in plain language rather than just referencing the document. They’ll know that “accessible” and “technically compliant” are not the same thing.

And critically, they will involve disabled people in testing. Not by proxy, not through a checklist, but by actually recruiting disabled users, e.g. people who use screen readers, switch access devices, voice input software and observing what happens when those users try to do things on the site you’re building.

I want to address the budget issue directly because it keeps coming up. Good accessibility services cost money. Disabled trainers with genuine expertise charge appropriately for that expertise. Web design agencies with real accessibility capabilities build that into their day rates. User testing with disabled participants costs money to recruit, facilitate, and analyse properly.

The cheapest providers are often cheap because they don’t do the hard work. An overlay subscription costs a few hundred pounds a year. A credible digital accessibility programme costs significantly more. The question isn’t which one is cheaper. It’s which one actually works and delivers, and which one treats disabled people as customers. Not as a compliance problem that has to be managed.

I find it genuinely baffling that organisations will spend substantial sums on leadership development, on rebrand projects, on staff away days, and then query the cost of accessibility work, which is both a legal obligation and a matter of basic dignity. But I’ve seen it enough that I’m no longer surprised. The question to ask yourself before you push back on a quote is: What is the human cost of a disabled customer, passenger, patient, or citizen being shut out of your service?

First, require that any training provider disclose the proportion of their delivery team who are disabled and their position on disability simulation. Use those answers as a shortlist filter, not purely as background reading.

Second, ask your web agency or anyone who supplies something accessibility-relevant how they recruit and involve disabled users in accessibility testing. Treat non-specific or evasive answers the same way you’d treat a non-specific answer about data security.

Third, find out what your own organisation looks like from the outside. And ask a disabled member of staff or a disabled member of the public to describe their experience accessing your services. What they tell you will be more useful than any training programme or audit you could buy.

The accessibility market will continue to grow. The number of suppliers will continue to grow. The gap between genuine expertise and confident claims will, if anything, widen before it narrows. Your job isn’t to find the most convincing, cheapest supplier. It’s to find the one whose work will still look credible six months after implementation, when the disabled people your organisation serves try to use what’s been built.

That’s the standard. Hold suppliers to it.

• IATA has published non-binding guidance on the transport of assistance dogs (service dogs is the terminology they are using) on aircraft. Spoiler alert: It’s not revolutionary, and I think the document would have benefited from a more social model approach (and wording). The annex could be helpful to look up rules in different countries.

• The Office of Rail and Road has put nationalised train operator South Western Railway (SWR) on formal notice over its poor record of delivering assistance to disabled passengers, accepting SWR's improvement plan submitted in January 2026, but making clear it will be held to account for delivery. The plan commits SWR to a series of fixes over the next 12 months, including better data tracking, clearer staff ownership, and stronger training, with the first set of actions due by the end of April 2026. ORR is requiring monthly progress updates and has scheduled four review meetings running through to April 2027.

• The Airbus Airspace U Suite, tested in the air last month and presented at the Aircraft Interiors Expo, could be the future of air travel for wheelchair users, writes John Morris.

I really thought these times were over, but apparently not. Deaf passengers are still put in a wheelchair at airports because because because…. I don’t know (if have issues watching it here or you don’t have TikTok, scroll down for the video in this article).

• Network Rail is searching for an Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Specialist.

• DfT Operator (the company that owns nationalised train operators) is seeking a Culture, Engagement and Inclusion Manager.

• HMRC is searching for an Accessibility Lead.

• Sorry for taking up space - A reflection on over-apologising, approval-seeking, and the hidden cost of constantly trying not to inconvenience anyone.

• I’m currently reading: Be your own bestie by Misha Brown - My rating: 4/5

The Accessible Link is a reader-supported publication.

Become a paid subscriber

I’m Christiane Link, and I improve the customer experience in aviation, transport, and travel. I worked as a journalist for over two decades and travelled extensively for business and leisure. I’m a wheelchair user.

Whether you're a Customer Service Director, a Head of Customer Experience, a corporate Accessibility Manager, a DEI leader, a transport planner, or a member of a disabled employee resource group, I can help you make your organisation more inclusive. You can book me for speaking engagements or hire me as a consultant for your accessibility or DEI strategy, communications advice and other related matters. I have worked for airlines, airports, train operators, public transport providers, and companies in other sectors.

If you want to read more from me, follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky or Mastodon. You can also reply to this email if you want to contact me.

.