ON the first Tuesday next month, expect the Island to take on a distinct shade of purple. It won’t be an unusual supermoon or another metrological event but Jersey coming together to join an international effort to raise awareness about accessibility.
Since its founding in 2018, Purple Tuesday has become a worldwide movement which focuses on how the customer experience can improve for people who have a disability in its many forms, physical and mental.
The Island’s ‘visitor economy strategy’ has a vision to ‘improve accessibility, allowing us to unlock the potential of the ‘purple pound’ – the phrase given the spending power of disabled people and their households, which gives also Purple Tuesday its name.
Recently, the founder of Purple Tuesday, Mike Adams OBE, visited the Island to highlight the forthcoming day – on 4 November – and speak to hospitality leaders about how they can grow their businesses by unlocking potential through accessibility.
Speaking to the JEP, he said: “Purple Tuesday is all about encouraging businesses and destinations to first think about accessibility and then make commitments to improve it.
“What sits behind that is the fact that the disability market – the purple pound, which is worth £274 billion and rising at 14% per annum – is a massive untapped market.
“The premise is by unlocking accessibility, you open up a market for businesses and organisations, and you drive a better quality experience for people like me.
“So, it’s a win, win, win. Last year, Jersey lit up some buildings purple, and I made the commitment that I’d come over this year, just look at what the Island is doing and its commitments in the lead up to Purple Tuesday.
“This will be a global event in nine countries with an audience reach of 35 million, which really drives awareness and understanding of disability, inclusion and accessibility.”
Mr Adams’ message is that although the traditional indicators of accessibility – such as ramps, lifts and signage – are important, that is far from the full story.
He said: “Traditionally, when I talk about disability, people say: ‘so, people like you’, and what they actually mean is wheelchair users, and what goes with wheelchair users is ramps and lifts.
“However, what I’ve been talking about in Jersey is that wheelchair users comprise eight per cent of the disabled population. So, the question back is: what are you doing for the other 92 per cent? This takes you away from lifts and ramps – which remain incredibly important to many people – to some other changes that could be made.
“So, in Jersey we have talked about the six second rule, where if you’re talking to someone on the neurodiverse spectrum, you ask your question and then you pause to allow that person to process the question and then give an enriched answer. It transforms that conversation within that community.
“I know it works, and it absolutely costs not a penny. Another example is getting your staff to say hello and goodbye in British Sign Language, which takes ten minutes these days.
“There is a perception that disability and accessibility remains an overhead and a cost, and we only do it when the sunny lands are there. But my message in Jersey in the last couple of days has been that accessibility should be essential because it can open up markets that you hadn’t thought of.
“If you’re struggling to survive, this should be part of your survival kit, but it’s also an opportunity to really thrive.”
He added: “We know that organisations that start to go on that journey benefit enormously from, firstly, the commercials tapping into the purple pound; secondly, what I always refer to as social common sense: doing your bit for ethical reasons and for social purposes, and thirdly, the ‘Gen Alpha’ movement increasingly expect their brands to deliver on diversity and inclusion, whether you’re disabled or not.
“The reality is, if you don’t, you’re going to struggle to recruit these in your workforce in the coming years, because they’ll choose with their feet and they only want to work for brands that have the same values as them.
“So, although it’s about accessibility, it is also tacking on to where we are in the world and what’s important for the next generation, of which these issues are important.”
Although making his first trip to Jersey, Mr Adams – like all impactful visiting speakers – had studied the lay of the land before meeting his audience.
Asked for his impressions on Jersey’s accessibility, he said: “We spent all day going around the Island on Wednesday: west, east, north, south and town. We went to Healing Waves and Beachability – two really good examples of unique initiatives that would attract people from the UK and abroad who want to come and have a holiday here because of it.
“We also visited the Zoo, where they talked about something called ‘culture city’, which was a pack for people on the neurodiverse spectrum, with fidget toys and other things. I know from experience that small things like this will attract families to come and enjoy the experience.
“So, there are huge pockets of things going on, and I was asking ‘how do you package them up in terms of promoting Jersey as a destination for families and for people who might just happen to have a disability?’”
Mr Adams said that ‘thinking purple’ applied equally to employers as it did to the hospitality sector.
“The reality is that hirers are not even thinking about this massive pool for which the reasonable adjustments are low cost or no cost,” he said. “It is just because assumptions are being made and this whole group of people are not being considered.
“I have always believed that the best organisations reflect in their workforce their customer base. If you think that 24 per cent of the population have rights under disability laws, then actually there’s a huge margin of employment possibilities that would be good for businesses and access a talent pool that has not been neglected, it’s just not been talked about.”
In bidding to make itself more accessible as a destination, Jersey did not help this summer when the lift on the fast ferry to and from the UK broke down and was not repaired for two months.
Mr Adams agreed that accessible transport should be an absolute priority.
He said: “My organisation did some work on tourist destinations, and what was really important to disabled travellers was that the destination didn’t have to be fully accessible but they needed confidence in being able to get there and get home.
“The issue of the boat lift is materially important, and in 2025, my question would be: how on earth does it take eight to ten weeks to get a part for a lift in this global logistics world? And even if it takes a bit of time, why aren’t you being honest and communicating with your customer base? I think, fundamentally, this is part of customer service.”
So, how did Mr Adams’ vision turn into a global awareness day?
“I went Christmas shopping in 2017 with my partner, who’s nondisabled, and when we go shopping, I use a wheelchair. We went into 28 shops that day because I’d like to get all my shopping done in one day.
“In 23 of the 28 shops, the frontline staff either ignored us all together, or only spoke to my nondisabled wife.
“We worked out it wasn’t direct discrimination; it was this fear from the frontline staff of saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing or unintentionally offending me, which meant that their way of dealing with that was to swerve the conversation together.
“The reality was, on that day, I only spent my money in four shops.”
He continued: “We then met some government ministers who were thinking about how do you revitalise the high street and shopping centres. And I just said: “look, I’ve had this experience. You’ve got Black Friday; you’ve got Cyber Monday. Why don’t we have something around accessibility? Why don’t we call it Purple Tuesday?
“And that was it: there was no expense on the branding but people really bought into it. And over, over eight years, it’s become a global phenomenon.
“There are activities going on from east to west because people connect into the messages around the importance of accessibility.”
If Purple Tuesday is the brainchild of Mr Adams, its impact in Jersey is thanks to Cirsty de Gruchy-Mosely, who is the Government’s Justice and Building a Safer Community Coordinator, and also founder of disability and community health organisation Connecting Communities.
Explaining the link, Mr Adams said: “I was in London a couple of years ago at the Disability Expo, and Cirsty walked past. In this day and age, you can know people before you know them because you follow them on social media and it can be a meeting of minds.
“We made a commitment that day to bring Purple Tuesday to the Island. Last year, with Visit Jersey, we made the commitment to light up some landmarks and, if that happened, which it did, I said I would visit the Island this year.
“We’re hopefully raising the profile, and we’ll really go for it on this Purple Tuesday. The day, fundamentally, is organic: it is about people wearing something purple or cooking something purple, or just putting it out on social media with the Purple Tuesday hashtag: telling the world why they are taking part.
“It is brilliant how fast something can grow when it is organic. It resonates because so many people will know someone who has a disability and think why should they go anywhere and have an experience that is less than anyone else, simply because they have a disability? And the answer is ‘they shouldn’t’, so it is not difficult to get people on board.”
