How To Create Inclusively-Designed, Accessible Marketing Content

A Comprehensive Guide Intended for Digital Marketers, Solopreneurs, and Professional Communicators Featuring Survey Data from Disabled Consumers

Created by:

Theresa Rizzuto, Graduate Student

UNC-Chapel Hill, Hussman School of Media and Journalism

“Communities designed with just one kind of person in mind isolate those of us defying their narrow definition of personhood.” - Haben Girma

Why This Guide?

One billion people—a seventh of the planet's population—live with a disability. Digital accessibility enables a wide range of users, including disabled users, to navigate, contribute to and engage with digital content. Without digital accessibility, a large portion of the population is unable to fully access the free marketplace of ideas we call the internet. Specifically, disabled individuals who rely on the use of assistive technology (AT), such as a screen readers, magnification software, and closed captions. If digital content is not properly coded to interact with assistive technology, those who rely on it become left out of the conversation.

Marketers, professional communicators and solopreneurs spend a lot of time thinking about our target customer. We want our content to be seen by the people who are most likely to find it useful. We optimize for maximum impressions and awareness, yet the effort too-often falls short when it comes to ensuring sight and hearing-disabled individuals will be able to view and interact with that same content.

Every design decision has the potential to include or exclude customers. Inclusive design and accessibility is about making informed design decisions that work for everyone, by better understanding disabled consumers and the friction they experience.

A note about the language used in this guide

Language is a key component of disability. The words companies use to describe disabled people can often be an indicator of whether or not disabled people were involved and valued in the process. In a study titled ‘Special Needs Is An Ineffective Euphemism,’ it was found that “persons are viewed more negatively when described as having ‘Special Needs’ than when described as having a disability.” In this guide, I have chosen to #SayTheWord disability. Started by disability-community activist Lawrence Carter-Long, #SayTheWord is a growing movement which encourages everyone to use the word “disability," therefore normalizing the term and removing the harmful stigma that often surrounds it in culture. (Forber-Pratt, 2020).

I have also chosen to use identity-first language (Disabled Person) in this guide rather than person-first language, with the acknowledgment that preferences vary across the vast and multi-faceted disability community.

Why Now?

Since the pandemic hit, many companies have had to adapt how they do business, moving the majority or all of their services online (Trade.gov). Internet usage on the whole is also on the rise. According to a Pew Research statistic, From 2000 to 2022, internet usage increased by 1,355%. This only exacerbates an existing problem: there is a large and growing population of sight and hearing disabled Americans who cannot access most digital marketing content online due to a lack of accessibility. In fact, a survey of the world's top one million websites found that 97.4% of these sites don't offer full accessibility. (WebAIM, 2022). The increased priority of e-commerce in a post-COVID-19 world has made the need for digital accessibility even more dire, yet in my own experience, too many brands still see it as a bonus, not a necessity.Why Me?

As a marketer and creative, I’m always trying to figure out the world from different vantage points , which is ultimately what led me to exploring disability. I've observed the lack of disabled consultants, colleagues, and guidance at my team's disposal as we created content each day with the hopes that it would reach our target audience. I realized that in addition to hiring disabled individuals, the only way to create more accessible content was to learn more. To talk to disabled consumers and listen to their pain points and friction, to see what possibilities exist.

I set out to study digital accessibility because I personally knew it was an area where I had only scratched the surface of all there is to learn. My mission now as a professional communicator and design leader in my company is to create awareness about accessibility, rooted from a place of knowledge that comes directly from disabled voices and experiences.

know I'm not alone—a review of industry literature points to the fact that many digital communicators are ill-equipped to meet the growing need for accessible marketing, and the stakeholders of their companies often don't recognize the immense business opportunity.

With the problems we face as professional communicators clear in mind, I set out to learn from sight and hearing-disabled individuals about how we can do better, and present the business opportunity that exists when we are willing to optimize for this growing need.

MARKETERS

No matter how well-resourced your marketing team is, unless you have disabled colleagues on your team, chances are you would benefit from more guidance around how to create inclusively-designed, accessible marketing content. This guide will be helpful to marketing teams of all sizes, and can also be leveraged to convince stakeholders in leadership why accessibility is worth investing in.

SOLOPRENEURS

The rise of easily-accessible digital tools and social media, spurred on further by the COVID-19 Pandemic and “Great Resignation” have cultivated the rise of the “Solopreneur.” A portmanteau of the words “solo” and “entrepreneur,” the term refers to someone who owns their own business or registered LLC, but has no co-founder and no intentions of hiring employees, and began to appear around 2010. As a solopreneur, you have had to learn how to market yourself creatively and effectively, while also managing every aspect of your business alone. That responsibility leaves little room for considering things like how to make communications accessible to sight and hearing-disabled folks. This guide will provide a resource for individuals who own their own businesses and are highly motivated to reach the maximum amount of their audience online, yet are the most strapped for resources due to their being a team of one.

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATORS

Anyone whose job it is to communicate online bears a responsibility to make their message accessible to individuals with a wide range of abilities. Whether you're a journalist, science communicator, or head of communications for a government organization, if you communicate professionally online, this guide is for you.

Introduction

Who Is This Guide For?

Background

Why Accessibility Matters

Data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization

  • According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25% of U.S. adults have some form of disability. That equates to roughly 61 million adults, all of whom represent potential new employees and customers.

  • Of those 61 million adults, 3.9 million adults between the ages of 18-64 are living with a hearing disability, and another 3.9 million are living with a vision disability.

  • With age, disability becomes more common, affecting about 2 in 5 adults age 65 and older, or roughly 40% in the United States, according to the CDC, or 2.4M.

“There are over 60 million U.S. adults who have some form of disability (one in four Americans). This number is expected to double by 2050.” - World Health Organization

Disability is most common in these groups:

  • 2 in 5 Non-Hispanic American Indians/Alaska Natives have a disability

  • 1 in 4 women have a disability

  • 2 in 5 adults age 65 years and older have a disability

The Disability Landscape

The ADA and Why It’s Important

What is the ADA?

The Americans with Disabilities Act is arguably one of the most monumental pieces of bi-partisan legislation ever signed into United States law. It's important to remember that this act never would have been made possible if not for the disabled rights movement, which worked tirelessly to make the injustices faced by disabled people for years visible to politicians. This movement challenged the notion that disabled people needed to be institutionalized, and fought against the exclusion and segregation that shut out disabled people from their communities. (Mayerson, 1992).

The ADA was passed in 1990, and ensures that government entities and private businesses will make reasonable accommodations to provide disabled individuals with usable access to their facilities – including access to workspaces.

Title III: Businesses that are open to the public

Title III prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities by businesses open to the public (also referred to as “public accommodations” under the ADA). The ADA requires that businesses open to the public provide full and equal enjoyment of their goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations to people with disabilities. Businesses open to the public must take steps to provide appropriate communication aids and services where necessary to make sure they effectively communicate with individuals with disabilities.

A website with inaccessible features can limit the ability of people with disabilities to access a public accommodation’s goods, services, and privileges available through that website

For these reasons, the Department of Justice has consistently taken the position that the ADA’s requirements apply to all the goods, services, privileges, or activities offered by public accommodations, including those offered on the web. (Justice.gov, 2022).

What Happens If Businesses Don't Comply?

You could get sued. In addition to it just being the right thing to do, complying with the ADA also protects you against legal action. Organizations that do not provide disabled individuals with appropriate access to facilities (yes, online ones, too!) could be exposed to potential lawsuits. This threat can be averted by making sure everyone is welcome to shop, browse, and receive services with ADA-compliant website and marketing materials.

At the heart of this guide is the idea that no guidance, products, or content of any kind should ever be created to serve disabled users without including them in the conversation. This concept seeks to honor a mantra common in the disability community: #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs. The saying has its origins in Central European political traditions, and is used to communicate the idea that no policy should be decided by any representative without the full and direct participation of members of the group(s) affected by that policy. This slogan has provided the foundation for the disability rights movement, emphasizing the fundamental importance of including voices from disabled people. (Forber-Pratt, 2020).

A guide like this could never exist without consulting disabled people. Too much of the guidance that exists online about accessibility intended for marketers seems to leave these critical voices out. This was the impetus for the creation of my survey, a list of 15 questions intended to uncover the experiences, pain points, and desires for hearing and sight-disabled consumers when it comes to how they interact and engage with digital marketing content online and in social media. The survey went out via two recruitment methods: snowball sampling and convenience sampling, and was completed by a range of sensory disabilities, ages, and levels of interaction online.

My objective was to come away with key learnings about what the biggest opportunities for improvement are in the area of accessible digital marketing. This guide is the culmination of my learnings from those results.

The Survey: Background & Objectives

Recruitment Methods

  • Convenience sampling

  • Snowball sampling

Who was surveyed:

  • 28 total respondents

Age

  • Respondents were between 18-24 and 71+ age ranges, with the majority of respondents being 56-70 years of age.

Disabilities Represented

  • Deafness and hard of hearing: 4 respondents

  • Blindness: 10 respondents

  • Autism: 1 respondent

  • Deaf and Blind: 2 respondents

  • Macular degeneration resulting in low vision: 3 respondents

  • Glaucoma resulting in low vision: 1 respondent

  • Diabetic retinopathy: 1 respondent

  • Autism resulting in photosensitivity: 1 respondent

Assistive Technology Reportedly Used:

  • VoiceOver

  • Screen reader: 45%

  • Braille 10%

  • Magnifier software: 10%

  • Cochlear implants: 5%

  • Hearing Aids: 5%

  • Voice assistants: 5%

  • Inverted colors: 5%

  • Subtitles: 15%

Specific types of screen readers mentioned were JAWS (Job Access With Speech) for Microsoft Windows, and NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access), a free and open-source, portable screen reader for Microsoft Windows.

Survey Results: Recruitment, Demographic & Disability Data

SURVEY RESULTS

Email marketing subscribers:

  • 14 yes

  • 5 maybe

  • 3 no

“Most marketing is designed for people who can see, excluding blind people.” -Anonymous survey respondent

Do Participants Follow Brands on Social Media?

  • 4 definitely not

  • 3 probably not

  • 8 might or might not

  • 5 probably not

  • 3 definitely yes

Who do they follow?

  • Amazon

  • Lionbrand

  • Ravelry

  • Fashion, health and beauty brands

  • Independent yarn dyers

  • Game brands

  • No one. I don’t use social media.

Active Social Media Platforms

  • 9 Instagram

  • 4 Twitter

  • 18 Facebook

  • 3 Pinterest

  • 3 Tiktok

“I use Facebook because it's accessible with voiceover technology, unlike the other most other social media platforms.” - Anonymous survey respondent

Marketing Behavior And Platform Data

What Disabled Customers Want to See More of:

  • Use alt-text

  • Always use closed captions

  • Invest in usability testing and audits

  • More representation

  • Keep emails and web pages simple

How disabled customers feel when they come across inaccessible content:

“I had a feeling of frustration and hopelessness. I just want to be able to access and understand the advertisement or article without having to ask someone to describe something.” - anonymous survey respondent

Social Media Pain Points

The vast majority of respondents reported that their biggest social media pain points were a lack of alt text, captions, audio and image descriptions, as well as low-contrast images, and elements such as font size being too small to interact with. Ads and pop-ups make navigating these platforms even more difficult.

What Causes Friction:

  • 31.3% Lack of image descriptions

  • 18.8% Lack of captions

  • 18.8% Elements are Too Small

  • 12.5% Pop-ups

  • 6.3% No social activism

  • 6.3% When brands post too much

Business Impact

“[Inaccessible brands] do not get our business. Period. If we cannot see the site, we do not use it. Because I am disabled, I shop almost exclusively online.” - anonymous survey respondent

  • According to research done by the “Click Away Project” in Britain, 71% is the percentage of disabled users who click away from sites with access barriers and don’t transact. This equates to $16.1 billion USD, representing a major commercial opportunity for brands.

  • When asked if they would still shop from a brand that did not offer accessible marketing, only 10% said yes, with 90% responding “no” and “maybe.”

  • The majority of hearing and sight-disabled participants spend on average $100-$300 per month online shopping.

The Consumer Model of disability was originally coined by Beth Haller, Ph.D., and Professor of Disability Studies and Media Studies at Towson University in Maryland in 1995, and is based on the idea that Disabled people are shown to represent an untapped consumer group. Making society accessible could be profitable to businesses and society in general. If people with disabilities have access to jobs, they will have more disposable income. If people with disabilities have jobs, they will no longer need government assistance.”

“People with disabilities are a very large, ignored, group of buyers. If we could have a simple website that was clean, easy to see, and accessible, we would use it all the time.” - anonymous survey respondent

Survey Results: Sentiment & Business Impact

Sources: Survey Results and The National Federation of the Deaf

Open Captions Versus Closed Captions Versus Subtitles:

Closed captions assume the viewer cannot hear. They can be toggled on or off, depending on the preferences and needs of the viewer. Open captions are burned into the video and cannot be turned on nor off. Subtitles are for hearing viewers who don’t understand the language of the audio. Their purpose is to translate the spoken audio into the viewer’s language. Unlike captions, subtitles do not include the non-speech elements of the audio (like sounds or speaker identifications). Subtitles are also not considered an appropriate accommodation for deaf and hard of hearing viewers.

Follow these tips to ensure captioning success on your marketing videos:

  • Always ensure captions are synchronized with the audio.

  • If you’re adding your own captions using a software tool, make sure they are placed in the lower third part of the screen, below the face, in an easy-to-see location and not obstructing any critical visual information.

  • Make sure text is at least 22 pt. size

  • Don't put too much text on the screen at once, opt for 1 to 3 lines of text at a time.

  • Keep text on screen long enough to ensure it can be easily read. Typically 3 - 7 seconds.

  • Ensure accuracy. Captions need to include proper capitalization and punctuation and be free of errors.

  • Include descriptions with important information about what's happening on screen including movements, music or other relevant audio information (beyond words).

  • Avoid using any platforms that don't support captioning, such as Facebook Live and Instagram Live.

Wondering How to Create Closed Captions?

Some platforms, like Youtube, have the option to auto-generate captions for you, which you can then edit for accuracy. To learn how, see further guidance in the “Resources” section of this guide. Instagram however, will auto-generate your captions, but does not allow you to edit them for accuracy. Often these auto-generated captions will be full of grammatical and spelling errors. When editing for accuracy is not an option, it’s best to burn them in yourself (open-captioning) using free (or affordable) online tools such as Kapwing. You can also use a tool like this to create what’s called an SRT (SubRip Text) file, which is a plain-text file that allows you to download the captions-only and then add it into your video later. You’ll find even more guidance for creating closed captions for every social media platform at the bottom of this guide in the “Resources” section.

Video Content Accessibility: More to Consider

Sources: Survey Results and the Bureau of Internet Accessibility

Some of the largest pain points for disabled internet users is a lack of captions on videos, but it also goes beyond that. Refer to this checklist before posting your next video on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Follow these tips to ensure optimal accessibility on your marketing videos:

  • Create a transcript. Transcripts are very helpful for people who cannot see or hear your video content. Make sure your transcript includes important audio and on-screen information that isn’t otherwise captured.

  • Structure the transcript properly. Headings and proper semantic structure make longer transcripts more accessible. You’ll find more tips for writing accessible transcripts in the Resources section of this guide.

  • Make sure the transcript is easy to find. Transcripts or links to them should be close to the video and clearly labeled. A good place to put this would be in the caption of your video post.

  • Make sure there is no fast-flashing content in your video. Flashing content can cause seizures, migraines, or other dangerous physical reactions for some.

  • Colors are used thoughtfully and with strong contrast. Make sure information is not conveyed with color alone and that important content has sufficient contrast (at least a 4:5:1 contrast ratio).

  • Make sure the platform or video player you're using supports captions, transcriptions, and audio descriptions. See the Resources section at the bottom of this guide for accessible video platform recommendations.

  • Make sure the platform you're using allows full keyboard and screen reader access, with properly labeled controls.

  • Make sure the platform is set to not play videos automatically when the page loads.

“Closed captioning on your videos shows you care about people with hearing loss. Showing people with disabilities (including hearing aids) makes you seem more in touch with your customers (or potential customers)” - anonymous survey respondent

Best Practices: Closed Captions & Video Accessibility

BEST PRACTICES

Use these tips for posting images on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter

HOW TO WRITE A GOOD IMAGE DESCRIPTION

  • When posting an image on social media, your first step should be to add visual descriptions. This can be done either by editing the alt text of your photo (which is read by screen readers but not otherwise visible on social media), or, you can add an image description directly into the caption of your post to provide context to the photo.

  • Be as descriptive as possible and include all visual elements that will be relevant to your audience. This includes adding race and gender to the humans in your images. Adding these important identity markers helps your audience understand who is being captured. Do not erase their identities by not including these descriptions.

  • Check your work with a screen-reader browser extension. Want to make sure your alt-text or in-caption image descriptions are being read properly? Use a screen reader to visit your social media content online and see how it is experienced by a sight-disabled person.

  • If there is text in the image, be sure to describe what the text says in the alt text area.

  • Always avoid decorative, specially-formatted fonts, as these cannot be picked up by screen readers

USE EMOJIS SPARINGLY

  • It is not advised to create emoticons with text and are suggested to be avoided. In this example, this visual experience of “shruggie” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ will be read aloud by a screen reader as: “Macron, backslash, underline, katakana, underline, slash, macron.”

  • Emojis displayed on a screen will be described by a screen reader. The 😊 emoji, for example, will be read aloud as “smiling face with smiling eyes.” Be considerate of screen reader users by using emojis sparingly and by placing spaces between them.

HOW TO CREATE ACCESSIBLE HASHTAGS

  • Always make hashtags title case by capitalizing the first letter of each word in a multi-word hashtag. This will make it easier for screen readers to perceive the hashtag as having multiple words so it can be read properly

  • Hashtags can be problematic for screen readers. If you are adding in a lot of hashtags to your Instagram post, try putting them in the first comment of your post instead of the post itself. Instagram's algorithm will still pick up the hashtags but they aren’t picked up by the screen reader unless that user chooses to read the comments on your post.

“I find social media very difficult when pictures are not described in words. pictures of text are not readable.” - anonymous survey respondent

Creating Accessible Image Content for Social Media

BEST (AND WORST) PRACTICES

Critiques referenced from #CriticalAxis, a project that collects and analyzes disability representation in media, created by Liz Jackson.

Example 1: Samsung

An ad spot from 2-15 to promote Samsung's new call center for hearing-disabled people

  • This ad does a few key things right. It acknowledges that disability friction often comes from social constructs and the built environment, not from disabled bodies or a medical fault. It also features captions, which is great.

  • Unfortunately, the ad spends the entire time exploiting an inspiring story, rather than explaining the features of this new service to the very people who would benefit from it. Because of an inability to consider what a disabled person may be curious to learn about the new service, the ad instead seeks to inspire non-disabled consumers and virtue-signal with an elaborate stunt.

    • Watch the video: https://youtu.be/UrvaSqN76h4

Example 2: LEGO Braille Bricks

LEGO launched this product in 2019 as a teaching tool for sight-disabled children

  • This ad relies on text without including visual descriptions, making this announcement inaccessible to the very audience it was intended for.

  • This product already exists and was created by a father in collaboration with his disabled son, yet LEGO gives no credit to the original inventor.

  • LEGO chooses to give away this product rather than monetize it, which devalues the purchasing power of disabled people and their families.

  • This ad effectively serves as "Inspiration Porn." According to disability activist and designer Liz Jackson, Inspiration Exploitation or Inspiration Porn describes the way disabled people are frequently manipulated and objectified in media for the benefit of everyone else. Inspiration Exploitation relies on many other stigmatizing tropes to create a distorted narrative that inspires broader audiences. Disabled people oftentimes describe the process of their likeness being turned into Inspiration Porn as dehumanizing. It is nothing more than a form of virtue signaling that is intended for the non-disabled gaze and does not consider disabled people to be an audience.

  • No disabled children are speaking in this ad, which is a dehumanizing trope in ads like this, sidelining disabled people in their own stories. (Jackson, 2019).

    • Watch the video: https://vimeo.com/332418211?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=5604695

Where Brands Can Go Wrong

BEST PRACTICES

Sources: Survey Results + Accessibility.digital.gov

DO

  • Consider Comic Sans, which is widely considered one of the most legible fonts for people with disabilities, especially dyslexia.

  • Choose a typeface that emphasizes clarity and legibility.

    • Factors to consider:

      • It performs well when it’s small or large.

      • It has a large x-height.

      • The character is large for its point size.

      • The metrics (such as x-height) are consistent between letterforms.

      • Individual letterforms are distinct in shape and can’t they be confused with others. For example: I, l, and 1 are distinct. 0 and O are distinct.

      • The typeface supports all of the characters and font styles that are needed.

  • Slightly temper the contrast between your text and background color so that the contrast is less harsh. For example, stark contrast like pure white on pure black can result in blurred text for people with Irlen syndrome.

DON’T

  • Don’t use photography behind text that creates a low-contrast graphic that is difficult to read

  • Use cursive

  • Use color combinations in your text that don't provide strong contrast. Make sure the contrast between the text and background is greater than or equal to 4.5:1 for small text and 3:1 for large text.

  • Use a font size for body text that is so small it cannot be comfortably read. Use at least an effective size of 16px, but this can vary depending on the design of the font.

  • Use a strong prevalence of red and green color combinations if you can avoid it, as this is the most common type of color blindness (red-green color blindness is known as deuteranomaly), affecting roughly 6% of the male population

“Never Use Cursive! and be sure I can increase the view size.” - anonymous survey respondent

Font, Type & Color

The Do’s and Dont’s

"There are lots of websites or to order craft supplies we are voiceover will just say button button button and not tell you what it is I get frustrated" - anonymous survey respondent

  • Do use descriptive text. "Learn More" and similarly vague CTA buttons aren't accessible as it doesn't provide enough context for users using assistive technology that looks at the links on a page.

  • Do use plain, descriptive language to communicate to the user where they will go next by clicking on your link or button.

  • Do create buttons with a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 or higher

  • Don’t use a digital black typeface or pure black on a pure white background — the stark contrast may cause eye strain.

  • Do: aim for more white space to help boost readability.

  • Don’t use a color combination that is common in color blindness, such as red / green, green / brown and green / blue.

Best Practices: CTA (Call To Action) Buttons

Buyer Beware: False Claims from Overlay Vendors

What Marketers and Brands Need To Be Aware of

Source: (Groves, Beck, 2021).

What is an overlay vendor?

Accessibility overlay tools are automated software solutions that claim to detect and fix web accessibility issues. Overlay tools work by modifying the code of a web page with a snippet of JavaScript and usually come in the form of a toolbar, plugin, app, or widget.

How can they be problematic?

It's imperative that marketers research and thoroughly vet the tools and accessibility resources they use, as some have been found to make false claims at the expense of customers and persons with disabilities. (Groves, Beck, 2021).

Beware of any overlay company that claims:

  • Adding the overlay product is the only thing the customer needs to do for accessibility

  • By using the overlay product, the customer's site will automatically become compliant with the ADA (and other relevant regulations and standards).

  • By using the overlay product, the customer's site will automatically attain compliance in an extremely short period of time.

  • By using the overlay product, the customer's website will automatically be accessible to everyone.

  • By using the overlay product, the customer will automatically be shielded from litigation.

  • The overlay product is the only one on the market that can make the customer's site compliant.

  • The overlay product alone is sufficient in achieving compliance without any other work needed on the underlying code.

The Truth:

Simply put, no overlay product on the market can make a website fully accessible to everyone, much less conform to major industry standards.

Overlay companies make false claims that by using their product, the customer's site will attain compliance in just one day or in a very short amount of time. In truth, no product can cause a website to become compliant on their own in any time period, much less one day. Claims like this undercut the time and nature of an undertaking like making an entire website ADA and WCAG compliant, which is entirely dependent on the size of the website and severity of its accessibility issues.

Overlay Vendors To Be Wary Of:

  • AudioEye

  • AccessiBe

  • Allyable

  • UserWay

  • Accessus.ai

  • ActiveIntent

  • EqualWeb

  • MaxAccess.io

Resources

Accessibility For Teams. Accesibility.digital.gov. https://accessibility.digital.gov/visual-design/typography/#:~:text=Use%20a%20large%20enough%20font,the%20design%20of%20the%20font.

American Foundation For The Blind. Reviewing the Disability Employment Research on People who are Blind or Visually Impaired: Key Takeaways. American Foundation For The Blind. https://www.afb.org/research-and-initiatives/employment/reviewing-disability-employment-research-people-blind-visually

Bazaman, M. (2022, Aug. 25). There Are 61 Million U.S. Adults Living with Disabilities—Here’s How Marketers Can Reach Them. Capterra. https://blog.capterra.com/accessibility-marketing/

Burbank, J. (2017, April). Measuring the Impact of Consumers with Disabilities. Nielsen. https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2017/measuring-impact-consumers-disabilities/

Census.gov (2020, July 31). https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2020/comm/living-with-disabilities.html

Charles F. Dillon, M.D., Ph.D.; Qiuping Gu, M.D., Ph.D.; Howard J. Hoffman, M.A.; and Chia-Wen Ko, Ph.D. (April 2010). Vision, Hearing, Balance, and Sensory Impairment in Americans Aged 70 Years and Over: United States, 1999-2006. CDC. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db31.htm

Chen, A. “Learn more” is not enough: A case for descriptive CTAs. UX Content Collective. https://uxcontent.com/learn-more-is-not-enough-a-case-for-descriptive-cta/

Coghlan, D., Brydon-Miller, M. (2014). The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (Vols. 1-2). London, : SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781446294406

Denhoff, K. (2022) Why Accessible Marketing is the Future, According to an Inclusive Design Expert. Hubspot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/accessible-marketing

Department of Justics (March, 2022). https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-issues-web-accessibility-guidance-under-americans-disabilities-act

Dowling, Hancock, Schaninger, Smet. (2022, July 13.). The Great Attrition is Making Hiring Harder, Are You Searching The Right Talent Pools? McKinsey. https://mck.co/3SDE2BN

Ekstrand, T. (2017). Democratic Governance, Self-Fulfillment and Disability: Web Accessibility Under the Americans With Disabilities Act and the First Amendment. Tandfonline.com. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/10811680.2017.1364918?scroll=top&needAccess=true

Forber-Pratt, A. (2020). Say The Word. Public Health Post. https://www.publichealthpost.org/research/say-the-word/#:~:text=A%20growing%20movement%20called%20%23SayTheWord,it%20came%20from%20our%20community.

Girma, H. (2019). Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law. 2 - 259.

Goodman, L. A. (2011). COMMENT: ON RESPONDENT-DRIVEN SAMPLING AND SNOWBALL SAMPLING IN HARD-TO-REACH POPULATIONS AND SNOWBALL SAMPLING NOT IN HARD-TO-REACH POPULATIONS. Sociological Methodology, 41, 347–353. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41336926

Groves, K, Beck, M. (2021) Truth In Advertising Does Not Exist For Overlay Vendors. Overlayfalseclaims.com. https://overlayfalseclaims.com/downloads/Truth-in-advertising-does-not-exist-for-overlays.pdf

Khorana, V. (2020, Dec. 7). How To Put Accessibility At The Forefront Of Marketing. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/12/07/how-to-put-accessibility-at-the-forefront-of-marketing/?sh=2d9ab0e87831

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When you know better, you do better. The implications coming out of this project are that marketers and professional communicators should be prioritizing accessibility more, and determining the best way to do that starts with a strategy informed by the first-hand experiences of disabled consumers.

Whenever possible, hire disabled professionals and empower them to make decisions that shape the way content gets created moving forward. In lieu of the resources to hire consultants, employees and accessibility audits, marketers, solopreneurs and communicators should keep in mind the pain points of disabled users when it comes to digital marketing, the largest ones being un-described videos and images, lack of contrast, and illegible text.

Beyond that, marketers must remember that language matters. How we represent disabled communities in our marketing reflects our attitudes about these communities, as well as our dynamic with them. When companies educate themselves on how to improve accessibility and comply with the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and ADA guidelines, they not only protect themselves from expensive lawsuits, they increase their brand sentiment and expand their customer base. The extra effort is not just worth it, it's essential. This guide will have been successful if it makes getting there even one step easier.

Thank you for reading!

Conclusion

References

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