2 Ways to Make Your Marketing Campaign More Accessible

A truly accessible marketing campaign should be able to effectively reach everyone in your intended audience, including people with disabilities.

Making marketing campaigns accessible is a way to ensure inclusivity, and it also makes good business sense. Around 15% of the population of the world has a disability. This is a lot of people who are missing out on your message if you don’t make it inclusive!

Here are some things to think about:

Subtitling your videos

Video is fast becoming one of the most popular ways for brands to communicate their message because it’s such a powerful medium.

You can convey messages through a video that it’s just not possible to convey through words. Human beings are visual creatures, after all, and images speak to us. Not only this, but videos are much more effective than pages of text at capturing our attention.

Imagine you’re scrolling through your social media feed one day, and there’s a video playing that shows something interesting to you. You’ll give it a second of your time, right? That’s a second that the video creator has to hook you in further and keep your attention. Articles don’t have this luxury because you have to make a decision to click through and read it, which a lot of the time people just don’t do.

Adding subtitles to your video means that your message can be conveyed to people who have a hearing impairment. It’s also a chance to enforce your message for people who can hear because it ensures that they receive it correctly.

It also means that people who are watching but can’t have the volume switched on (perhaps they are covertly watching at work!) can access your message.

Making your webpage accessible

The main thing to remember when you develop an accessible marketing digital strategy is to get feedback from people with the disabilities you are trying to cater for and from people who have worked extensively with them.

If you want to make your website itself accessible for everyone, there are a few things that you can consider:

• Keep the layout simple. Try to keep the information on your page simple and to the point and easy to navigate. This is helpful for people with ADHD who can become overwhelmed if they are presented with too much information at once, and for people who are visually impaired as it helps them to find the information they are looking for more easily. Plus, it’s just good design practice!
• Consider screen readers. People who are visually impaired often use a screen reader to help them to read websites. For your website to work well with a screen reader, you should make the language clear and descriptive and avoid vague terms like ‘click here’ on your hyperlinks. Screen readers often list links separately, so it’s important that their usage is clear. Make use of descriptive headings, and again, keep the layout simple.
• Make your website keyboard accessible. People who are visually impaired often use the keyboard rather than a mouse to navigate, so make sure that your website follows a central line and can be navigated in this way.