Welcome to the Click-Away Pound Survey

Click-Away Pound is a research survey designed to explore the online shopping experience of people with disabilities and examine the cost to business of ignoring disabled shoppers.

Online shops should be open for everyone, but what if you can't use a mouse, or see the screen, or hear the sound? The UK’s 13 million people with a limiting long term illness, impairment or disability should be amongst those who benefit most from online access to the UK’s major retailers. But many retailers still don't design and build their websites to include everyone, turning away millions of customers and billions in sales.

In 2019 we wanted to see what has changed since the first survey. Has business listened? Has online shopping become any easier for people with disabilities?

2019 survey and report

This new report publishes the 2019 survey findings and compares them with those from 2016, and the results are not encouraging.

In 2016, the survey found that more than 4 million people abandoned a retail website because of the barriers they found, taking with them an estimated spend of £11.75 billion. In 2019, that lost business, the ‘Click-Away Pound’, has grown to £17.1 billion.

One section of the report is new for 2019; CAP Focus takes a closer look at the telecoms sector. Following feedback from the 2016 Survey, we also asked users about their experience of reCAPTCHA.

As in the first survey, we encouraged participants to add their own comments about their online experience and these are cited in the report as reminders that the accessibility and usability issues highlighted here can have a very real and personal impact on the individual.