4 easy steps to improve accessible advertising
According to an Ofcom study, approximately 1
Another six million people who aren’t hard of hearing use them for different reasons, like watching their favorite show on a loud train where they can’t hear the audio, or watching their favorite show in a quiet place where they don’t want others to hear the audio. Another reason could be that English isn’t their first language and subtitles help them to understand the story better than if they were relying on audio alone.
You get the idea: subtitled content not only enables people hard of hearing or deaf to fully enjoy what they watch but millions of other people too. Yet still, somehow the number of subtitled ads is low; and so these groups are ‘disconnected’ from their viewing experience when the ad break kicks in, despite the 72% of people in the UK who think TV ads should be subtitled.
Let’s just take a second to think about that and the vast audience that advertisers simply aren’t reaching by not subtitling their ads.
4 things brands can do now to improve accessibility in advertising:
1. Tell your creative agency early (at pitch stage even) that you want to make your ad accessible and what elements 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 make sure they report on subtitling when they come to submit your final TV ad to The Library for clearance.
4. Fill in Clearcast's short survey, telling us as much or as little as you can about your position on accessible ads and what the barriers are to creating more.
4 things agencies can do now to improve accessibility in advertising:
1. Ask your client early (ideally before you even pitch) if they’d like you to make their ad accessible and which elements 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. 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 or not.
4. Fill in Clearcast's short survey, telling us as much or as little as you can about your position on accessible ads and what you think the barriers are to creating more.
What is Clearcast’s accessibility survey and The Library?
With the support of our shareholder broadcasters and industry bodies Thinkbox, the Advertising Association, ISBA, the IPA and the British Arrows, we’ve launched our ‘Accessible Ads for All’ campaign to raise awareness about this topic.
As part of this campaign, we’re running a short industry-wide survey to gather anonymous opinions on the subject and understand more about existing processes and what the barriers are to making more TV ads accessible. With supportive conversations from RNID (the charity supporting people who are deaf, have hearing loss and tinnitus) 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 feed it back, which will also help drive change.
The survey closes on Tuesday 18th April. The data will be analysed by independent media market research professional Sue Gray and the results will be shared in May.