Correspondence

Improving access to and use of digital services: open letter to industry

Published 17 July 2026

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
100 Parliament Street
London
SW1A 2BQ
www.gov.uk/dsit

Dear business leaders,

I am writing to you as sector leaders in providing essential digital services to customers across the UK. Digital services are now fundamental to everyday life. From managing money and paying bills online, to accessing transport, and news, people are increasingly relying on digital channels to fully participate in society and the economy. But for too many people, using these services can be difficult, frustrating, or inaccessible. I would like to invite you to work with government to improve the accessibility and usability of essential digital services, to ensure that they are more reliable, usable, and accessible for all customers.

There is a strong and growing evidence base that shows a significant number of people are technically online but struggle to use or navigate services: c. 27% of UK adults are “narrow internet users” and c. 43% ask others to do something for them online. Improving the accessibility and usability of digital services is critical to ensuring that everyone can participate in modern digital society.

While significant progress has been made across many sectors, there remains variation and incoherence in how services are designed and experienced in practice. Too often, digital journeys are complex, inconsistent, or do not provide effective routes for support when things go wrong. These challenges risk undermining trust, limiting participation, and driving digital exclusion. This is not simply a question of access or skills; people are disengaging from online services because of these problems, and when services are too frustrating to navigate, barriers are created.

The Government is clear that progress must go further and faster. We want to work closely with you to improve how digital services are designed and delivered. As sector leaders we are relying on your leadership in best practice, ability to innovate and bring new solutions to market, and, deep understanding of customer needs, including customers that are most vulnerable, and to ensure digital services work for everyone in our society. While our strong preference is to achieve this through voluntary collaboration, we will continue to keep under review whether further government intervention may be needed to ensure progress is delivered at the pace required to address the scale of the challenge.

This includes:

• Ensuring services are easy to navigate and understand
• Designing with the needs of disabled people and those at risk of digital exclusion in mind
• Building in safety, privacy and security in ways that do not create additional complexity for users

To support progress, DSIT is looking to support industry partners to:

• Define a clear problem statement and develop a shared understanding of what good looks like in practice
• Support a voluntary, standards-led approach to improving usability and accessibility for essential private sector digital services
• Agree a cross-sector roadmap and timeline for adoption

To begin this work, I would like to invite you to a roundtable taking place 13 July 2026 to further discuss the above points I would be grateful if you could respond to this letter by confirming your contact details for a formal invitation to the roundtable to be issued. I look forward to receiving your response.

Yours sincerely,

Baroness Lloyd
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Department for Science, Innovation & Technology

Minister Hardy
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Minister McCluskey
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero