Advertising Agency Trends: 3 Tips for Accessible Marketing
Making your marketing more accessible is an important consideration in today’s digital age. With more and more people relying on technology to access information and engage with brands, it’s essential to make sure that your marketing is inclusive and welcoming to everyone. In this blog post, we’ll explore three tips for making your marketing more accessible.
1. Use alt text
Alt text is a short description of an image that is read aloud by screen readers. By including alt text, you can make your images accessible to people with visual impairments. Alt text should be a concise and accurate description of the image, providing enough detail for the listener to form a mental picture of the image. For example, instead of writing “woman working on laptop,” you might write “a woman typing on a laptop at a desk in a brightly lit office.” In addition to making your images accessible, using alt text can also improve your search engine optimization (SEO) by providing more context for search engines to understand what your content is about. That’s a win-win situation for you and your business! We even do this on our own website when importing new imagery and content and have seen keywords we are targeting gain traction on Google.
2. Use plain language
One of the keys to making your marketing more accessible is using plain language. Avoid using jargon, technical language, or complex sentence structures that may confuse or alienate some of your audience. Use clear, concise language that is easy to read and understand. This is especially important when creating content like product descriptions or instructions, where clarity is critical to ensuring that your message is understood. In addition to using plain language, try to avoid using words or phrases that may be offensive or exclusionary to certain groups of people. For example, instead of using gendered language like “he” or “she,” use gender-neutral language like “they” or “their.”
The more people feel connected to your marketing, the greater success you will have with your advertisements and the products or services that you sell. People want to feel included and part of a community, not a bottom line.
3. Make your website accessible
Ensuring that your website is accessible to people with disabilities is essential for making your marketing more inclusive. There are a variety of ways to make your website more accessible, including:
Providing captions for videos: Captions make your videos accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Additionally, add audio descriptions of scenes for those who are blind and visually impaired.
Providing transcripts for audio content: Transcripts make your audio content accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing and those who prefer to read rather than listen.
Using keyboard navigation: Keyboard navigation allows people to navigate your website using only the keyboard, making it accessible to people who have difficulty using a mouse.
Making sure your website is compatible with screen readers: Screen readers are assistive technologies that read aloud the content of a website for people who are blind or have low vision. In addition to these tips, there are many other ways to make your marketing more accessible, including using high-contrast colors, providing text descriptions for visual content, and using descriptive link text.
See firsthand how we’ve created accessible videos for our client, the Nebraska Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired!
Conclusion:
By taking steps to make your marketing more accessible, you can reach a wider audience and improve the user experience for all. Want to get even more information about creating a more accessible brand? Follow the button below to chat with us and what we’ve done for our own clients!
