Accessible advertising: a journey unfolding

Every new industry player introduced to the topic of accessible advertising, has responded positively to the opportunity to delight more consumers. The Advertising Accessibility Alliance for Europe, which initially included P&G, egta, RNIB, EACA, and WFA, is now led by ISBA and has expanded to include more partners, advertisers, publishers, and others. Our collective efforts have helped raise widespread awareness through conferences, articles, and networking. Our key focus is to make our advertising accessible to people with viewing and hearing impairment through audio description and open/closed captioning.

Two years ago, accessibility was quite limited in scope, and fragmented across processes and teams. More brands and agencies are creating accessibility leadership roles, and these individuals and teams are establishing accessibility centres of excellence. There has been more accessibility and representation in adverts than anytime previously. Innovations are taking shape at the confluence of AI, accessibility, and advertising that were only dreamt about a few short years ago.

Our Baileys brand partnered with the Royal National Institute for the Blind to raise the bar on alt text and image descriptions, creating ‘Delicious Descriptions’ for Baileys Social. In partnership with Meta, we created a playbook on description strategy and language guidance, which is now available for other brands to use.

Guinness will never settle until everyone feels they can belong in rugby. Our research revealed that 71% of the blind and visually impaired community engage with sport through TV and radio but cannot fully experience the game at home with standard commentary and subtitles. Guinness leveraged its partnership with ITV in Great Britain to make sporting history by trialling live descriptive audio commentary for two games during the Guinness Men’s Six Nations 2024.

For our Paralympic Games coverage in Paris 2024, we invited our advertising partners to join us on our continuing journey to the most inclusive and accessible viewing experience.

Toyota and Allianz created the most accessible sponsorship idents ever; Bupa teamed up with Channel 4 and inclusive marketing agency, Purple Goat, to create tools and training to equip agencies to craft diverse and disability-inclusive content and campaigns; and we asked all our advertising partners to help us bring accessibility to the ad breaks. With support from industry bodies such as ISBA and IPA, and help from copy delivery aggregators, we managed to increase the number of ads supplied with subtitles (25%) to a whopping 86% during the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympics.

When sign language was first introduced on BTV during COVID, we observed a very positive reaction from the hearing-impaired community: they felt seen and heard. Like P&G, more local advertisers are starting to come around to the idea of accessibility. While it might take them some time to adjust their creatives, we, as a media partner and host for their ads, are determined to do more.

FranceTV Publicité was the first company in France to broadcast advertising translated into sign language in 2023. In 2024, we strengthened our commitment during the Olympic and Paralympic Games by offering advertisers subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing. Seven partners sponsored the entire Paralympics on France Télévisions and for the first time in France, 100% of the ads broadcast during the Olympics came with subtitles. Out of 500 spots (Olympics and Paralympics included), 93% were subtitled by the France.tv access teams.

Approximately four out of five P&G assets across Europe are now delivered with captions – whether open, closed, or supers. Additionally, one in three TV ads includes audio description in markets where it is available. This does not account for ads designed with clear voiceovers that offer sufficient detail for those with visual impairments. We are making strides through close collaboration with more partners. In TV, more broadcasters have recently enabled audio description (AD) and/or closed captioning for ads: RAI Italy, ANT1 Greece, BTV Bulgaria, ZDF and ARD Germany and French TF1, M6, Canal+ and France Télévisions to name a few. In digital, Meta has been a pioneer, continuously adapting its offerings across Facebook and Instagram (auto- generated and editable closed captions and Image Alt Text as well as audio descriptions for both organic and paid videos).

Of course, challenges remain. What is most needed today is a strong push from brands and good will from all partners for accessibility to become a standard part of every communication we develop. Next steps include further awareness- raising and education to ensure that all stakeholders fully understand how to implement accessibility effectively. As the industry comes together, we are better equipped to collectively solve problems, align on priorities, establish protocols, standards, metrics, and codify best practice in industry playbooks. The acquisition and continued development of relevant technologies will also be central to our collective success.

WPP is innovating how accessibility is being shaped and has developed a prototype tool that combines AI and accessibility to more easily, economically, and creatively bring the process of audio descriptions into TV adverts. We are still in the early stages, but our goal is to revolutionise the industry in how accessible advertising is achieved.

A more structural measurement of progress made is essential to rally action and drive accountability. It is now possible thanks to Extreme Reach. 

It provides a factual departure point for the industry. The opportunity is huge as estimates show that only 17% of ads currently have any accessibility feature.

Our next steps are focused on rolling out the Diageo Accessible Marketing Playbook across our global brands implementing accessibility features across our assets and continuing to advocate with media partners. We are constantly learning and striving to do more, and we will continue to work to make our marketing as accessible as possible, ensuring that everyone feels included.

The more accessible an ad is, the greater the number of people who see it. Everyone is a consumer; everyone has interests and needs. There is no reason to exclude people with disabilities. We can contribute to growth and market expansion and integrate a large and usually underserved social group.