By Marcella Fazzio
The film industry has learned to measure pretty much everything.
We follow real-time box office, room occupancy, performance per square, demographic profile, market share, streaming competition and consumer habits. Each decision seeks to answer the same question, where are the opportunities for growth?
But there is one question that rarely appears in the discussions of the market:
How Many People Is Cinema Failing to Reach?
We're not talking about a niche, we're not talking about an exclusively social agenda, we're talking about a market.
According to IBGE data, Brazil has about 18.6 million people with disabilities. It is a larger population than that of many countries and it actively participates in the economy, consumption and cultural life. Still, when we think of a movie audience, this audience almost never appears in strategic analysis.
Maybe because accessibility has historically been treated as a regulatory obligation, a necessary cost, an item of compliance. But what if we're looking at the theme from the wrong angle?
In recent years, more mature markets have come to discuss a concept known as Disability Economy or Purple Economy, the economic strength represented by people with disabilities and throughout the consumer network that accompanies them. International studies estimate that this market moves between US$ 13 trillion and US$ 18 trillion globally when considered family members, friends and support networks that influence or share consumer decisions.
The most interesting data, however, is not in the financial volume, it is in the consumption behavior. People with disabilities rarely consume alone.
When a person goes to the movies, they are often accompanied by family members, partners, friends, support network. This means that accessible experience does not only impact one consumer. It influences the decision to consume an entire group.
In this reality, accessibility is no longer an initiative aimed at a specific portion of the population and becomes a strategy to expand the audience.
The displayer knows that the profitability of a visit cannot be measured only by the entry ticket. An occupied chair represents the possibility of consumption on various fronts of the business. And a positive experience increases the chances of returning from that audience and their entire group.
For decades, people with disabilities face barriers to access cinemas, audiovisual content and cultural experiences on equal terms. The result was the formation of a repressed demand that is still far from being fully met.
Contrary to what many people imagine, we are not facing a new audience, we are facing an audience historically excluded from the market. That difference is fundamental.
The question ceases to be "is there demand?" and becomes "how much of this demand are we not yet capturing?"
For example, streaming has already timidly been doing this movement, subtitles, audio description and accessibility features become part of the platform strategy that compete for global attention. Only here at MAV in 12 months have more than 30 titles been produced with ASL, American Sign Language for some platforms and this number should grow more and more. Not because they are philanthropic organizations, but because they understand a simple logic, the more people can consume content, the greater the audience potential.
In cinema, this logic is no different, the point is that we still discuss accessibility mainly by the prism of obligation. Maybe it's time to start discussing it too from the perspective of opportunity.
And it is precisely this change of perspective that begins to gain space in some of the main meetings of the sector.
At Expocine, for example, accessibility has evolved with each issue. More than providing resources, the event has sought to incorporate them into the planning of the participants' experience, structuring operations involving live subtitling, translation, interpretation of Libras, technical integration and planning between different teams so that more people can follow the content on equal terms.
This movement is important because it sends a clear message to the market, accessibility should not be understood as a differential, it should be part of the quality of the experience.
Just as today we expect good infrastructure, excellent projection, connectivity and relevant content in a big audiovisual event, we hope that accessibility will be considered a natural requirement so that more professionals can participate, learn and contribute to the development of the sector.
And perhaps the most important question for the future of the sector regarding accessibility is not how much it costs to make an experience accessible, maybe the question is:, How much does it cost to keep leaving millions of consumers out?
This will be one of the themes discussed by MAV during Expocine, from a perspective still little explored in the Brazilian audiovisual market: the economy of accessibility and its potential to boost new audiences for cinema.
The themes presented in this article are part of the discussions that move the audiovisual market and will be present, as sub-themes, in the programming of panels, lectures and debates of EXPOCINE 2026. Between September 29 and October 2, in São Paulo, the main professionals of production, distribution, exhibition and other segments of the industry meet to discuss trends, challenges and opportunities that impact the future of cinema. Ensure your FORUM credentials and follow these debates closely at expocine.com.br
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