We’re best known for clearing ads in the UK and enabling brands to advertise responsibly on TV and VOD platforms. We also play a wider role in the world of advertising and an example of this is our commitment to making TV and VOD ads more accessible.
As part of our ‘Ads for all’ campaign, we thought it might be useful to share what we’ve learnt so far about how to improve the levels of accessible advertising.
5 things brands can do now to make their ads more accessible:
1. Tell your creative agency early (at pitch stage even) that you want to make your ad accessible and what features you’d like to use (subtitles, signing or audio description).
2. Ask your creative agency to work in a budget line for subtitling, audio description or signing before they send you their costs.
3. Ask your creative agency to work your brand name into the audio of your ad rather than relying on your logo, so people with sight loss know whose ad is playing.
4. Ask your creative agency to make sure they report on subtitling and audio description when they come to submit your final TV ad to The Library for clearance.
5. Check out the results of our ‘Ads for all’ accessible ads survey which will help you understand and overcome some of the key barriers in creating more accessible ads. Results coming soon.
5 things agencies can do now to make their ads more accessible:
1. Ask your client early (ideally before you even pitch) if they’d like you to make their ad accessible and which features they want to consider (subtitles, signing or audio description).
2. Ask your client if they want you to work in a budget line for subtitling, audio description or signing before you send them costs.
3. Consider working your client’s brand name into the audio of your ad rather than relying on their logo, so people with sight loss know whose ad is playing.
4. Ask whoever is responsible in your agency for submitting final ads to Clearcast to make sure they tick the box in The Library which asks if the ad’s subtitled and audio described so we can track the data and feed it back to the industry.
5. Check out the results of our ‘Ads for all’ accessible ads survey which will help you understand and overcome some of the key barriers in creating more accessible ads. Results coming soon.
What is Clearcast’s accessible ads survey?
As part of our ‘Ads for All’ campaign, we ran a short industry-wide survey to gather anonymous opinions on the subject of accessible TV ads and understand more about existing processes and what the barriers are to making more. With supportive conversations from RNID, RNIB and key industry players, it’s become clear this is an area we’re all keen to improve.
Teri Devine, the associate director for inclusion at RNID says: “There are 12 million people in the UK who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus, and they have a right to access broadcast content as much as everyone. It’s great to see this campaign highlighting how all advertisers can make their content more inclusive and we look forward to seeing the results of the survey.”
And as of 30th March, all agencies are using our new online system, The Library, to upload their final TVC to us for clearance. This system has a reporting function, so now we can start to gather data for the industry on how many ads are being subtitled and audio described and feed it back, which will also help drive change.
The survey closed on April 18th. The data has been analysed by independent media market research professional Sue Gray and the results will be shared soon.
