Spotlight: Accessible Advertising

Disabled people’s first contact with the event may be through advertising, and you can win or lose potential disabled participants or audiences here.

“When I’m leading workshops or doing a talk, and no deaf people come. I wonder, why is that? And you look at the marketing and it’s just that they’re not spreading the word. It’s not advertised to the deaf community to know what is out there. Use deaf people, pay them to promote the event. I’m more likely to go to an event if I see it being advertised by a deaf person rather than an interpreter advertising it, it just makes it more attractive to me.”

— Bea Webster

1. Audio and video promo

   Ensure these have captions, are translated into BSL (preferably by deaf authors), and videos are audio-described or have an accompanying written description. Avoid flashing and strobing images and loud music or sounds. Pay everyone who is doing advertising work for their time.

   Reference: Bea Webster, Jamie Hale

2. Images and gifs

   When you use images or gifs on social media, make sure you use alt text to describe them. You don’t need to describe every single detail; keep it succinct, getting across the core aspects of the image. You can also be creative, bring some flair and personality to the description, and humour if appropriate.

   At time of writing, Twitter was testing a new auto-reminder functionality for Alt Text. In the meantime, you can follow @AltTxtReminder on Twitter and they will automatically remind you every time you post an image without alt text (you can then add an image description in a tweet below).

3. Hashtags and Twitter Name

   Capitalise the first letter of each word within a hashtag, so screen readers don’t read it as one big, jumbled word (this also makes it easier for everyone to read). This should also be done with your twitter name.

4. Emojis

   Don’t use too many emojis in a post; a screen reader reads out what every single emoji is, which can get wearing, especially when someone uses the same emoji several times in a row or separates words with the clapping hands emoji. A small number of emojis (around three) is fine.

5. Accessible Design

   Provide a range of different advertising materials catering to different access needs such as:

   • Easy Read

   • Large Print

   • Sans serif typeface

   • Colour palettes that are high contrast and good for people who are colour-blind, blind, and/or partially sighted.

   • Succinct materials that are visually clean and spacious.