If you submit a script for clearance this week or next, your Clearcast contact could ask if you’re going to make your ad accessible.
Why?
Today is the 13th Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) and last week was Deaf Awareness Week.
So what better time to launch our ‘Accessibility Focus Fortnight’ here at Clearcast, aimed at encouraging conversations between you and your Clearcast contact about all the wonderful things that come with making accessible ads?
One of the four barriers to making ads accessible, as identified in our #AdsForAll survey last year, was timing. Agencies and brands admitted they just weren’t thinking about it or discussing it early enough in their planning and it tended to come as an after-thought.
The dedicated clearance and ops staff at Clearcast talk to agencies and advertisers submitting ads (that’s you!) on a daily basis, early in the ad production process, at script and rough cut stage.
That’s why, for these two middle weeks of May, the team will be asking nice and early in the clearance process, if you plan to make your ad accessible. They will offer to send on more information about the benefits of making ads accessible, as well as some suggested solutions to the perceived challenges.
More work to be done
Last week we released the first 4 months worth of data on the ‘intention to subtitle’ toggle in our Library, and announced that only 20% of ads were opted in.
Not only do brands have a social responsibility to make TV ads available to everyone, but a vast opportunity to reach a wider audience is being missed by those who aren’t. A 2017 study revealed that brand awareness increased 18% for ads that were subtitled.
As recently summed up at the “Pioneering Accessible Advertising’ session at Advertising Week Europe this week, accessible advertising should be considered an “exciting opportunity, not a tick-box exercise.”
“Progress over perfection”
-Henrietta Corley, business director at UK agency AMV BBDO, speaking at ‘Pioneering Accessible Advertising’ session at Advertising Week Europe this week.
As Henrietta puts it, if more of the industry starts taking small steps, that alone will help generate improvement. Afterall, many hands make light work. We hope this Accessibility Focus Fortnight helps to facilitate some of those small steps.
Further resources:
Accessibility News and Blogs | Clearcast
ISBA | Reframing accessible advertising
