Tips for your Organisation
to attract and retain customers with disability
Accessible marketing refers to the practice of making marketing materials, campaigns, and communications accessible to people with all types of disabilities.
This may include braille, podcasts, captioning, Plain or Easy English items, checklists and communication boards.
Being accessible means that more people with all types of physical and cognitive disabilities can access your marketing and understand what you do and purchase your product or service, get information or join your movement.
Benefits to your Organisation
Accessible marketing ensures your organisation offers equity and inclusion. By offering information in different formats you can:
- Attract and retain customers: By making marketing materials accessible to people with disabilities, organisations can reach a larger customer base and tap into a significant market segment.
- Increased brand loyalty and trust: Accessible marketing can show that a business cares about and values the needs of all its customers, which can increase brand loyalty and trust.
- Improved SEO: Websites that are accessible to people with disabilities are also more likely to be accessible to search engines, which can improve search engine optimization (SEO) and increase visibility.
- Improved user experience: Accessible marketing materials can improve the user experience for everyone, not just people with disabilities, by making materials more usable and easier to understand.
- Inclusiveness: By thinking about how people access, learn and get information, your organisation is being inclusive and equitable.
- Cost savings: Implementing accessibility early in the design process can save costs compared to retrofitting later on.
Accessible marketing not only benefits the people with disabilities but also brings many positive outcomes for the organisation.
How to Make
Marketing Material Accessible?
Organisations can do simple things to ensure their marketing is accessible. Here are a few suggestions:
- Alternative Text: Use alternative text (alt text) for images: Alt text provides a text description of an image, which can be read by screen readers and other assistive technology.
- Captioning: Provide captions or transcripts for videos: Captions provide a written version of the audio in a video, which can be read by people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Simple Language: Use clear and simple language: Use plain language, avoid jargon and complex sentence structures, and break up long blocks of text.
- Multiple Platforms: Provide multiple ways to access information: Provide information in different formats, such as text, audio, and video, to make it accessible to people with different abilities.
- Colour Contrast: Use color contrast: Use high-contrast colors for text and backgrounds to make it easier for people with low vision to read.
- Website Access: Design for keyboard navigation: Ensure that all functionality on the website can be accessed via keyboard so people who use assistive technology or have mobility impairments can navigate the site easily.
- Podcasts: Podcasts can assist people with vision impairment and low literacy.
- Easy English or Easy Read guides: This is a style that uses short sentences, simple words with an image or picture. It is normally in Dot points with large text size and lots of white space. It is designed for people with low literacy levels, learning disabilities or cognitive impairments.
- Plain English: Offers information in an easy to understand and quick format with short sentences and paragraphs. It uses everyday words with headings that tell the reader what the information is about with ease.
- Communication Boards: a picture board with a word under it to allow people who are non-verbal to communicate with others.
Benefits of Braille
Grade 1 Braille translates each individual print letter, number or punctuation mark into a braille sign.
Grade 2 Braille in addition to the alphabet uses abbreviations, common words and contractions similar to shorthand and is used by experienced braille users.
Our experienced team can create braille documents from business card size through to A3, printing single or double sided.
Ideal for the vision impaired, the types of documents that can be printed Braille are:
Ideal for the vision impaired, the types of documents that can be printed Braille are:
- Business cards
- Brochures
- Flyers
- Books
- Posters
- Menus
Flagstaff can also provide accessible marketing options with Easy English, Plain English, Podcast and Video captioning.
Your Website Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
WCAG is an international standard to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities.
Web standards are implemented in browsers, blogs, search engines, and other software that power our experience on the Web. People with disability use the web to assist them in varies ways and may have different barriers depending on their abilities.
There are many assistive technologies and tools that can support a person to interact with websites including screen readers, screen magnifiers, text to speech, voice recognition, colour contrast and tools for people who cannot use a keyboard or a mouse.
You can find more information and ideas at https://www.w3.org.
Inclusion is our business
Making marketing materials accessible involves understanding the needs of people with disabilities and designing materials with those needs in mind.
It is important to test and make sure the materials are working well for the target audience and identify any issues where possible get professionals to assist you.
For more information about accessible marketing options such as printing Braille, contact Flagstaff Print, Mail and Digital on 4272 0257 or fill out the form below.
Learn More About
Accessible Marketing
We’d love to give you more information accessible marketing and our Print, Mail & Digital services. Fill out the form and we will be in touch with you shortly.
