A Business Case For Inclusion

It’s not only important from an ethical standpoint to create marketing assets that are as accessible as possible; from a business perspective, too, it’s the right choice for leaders when producing front-facing campaigns.

Higher inclusivity means a broader audience of people we can speak to. It contributes to a better customer experience overall, both for those individuals with and without visual impairments (and, notably, billions of people worldwide do live with some visual impairment, according to the World Health Organization).

But how does one go about determining how accessible (or not) the marketing collateral of a certain brand might be?

At Digital Summit: Deep Dive Into Email, I presented a talk to elucidate this called, “Accessibility Solutions: Making Your Marketing Functional And Beautiful For Everyone.” (Digital Summit is a virtual conference that brings professionals, experts and enthusiasts together to discuss, teach and learn about trends and best practice in technology, digital marketing and other topics.)

In the talk I shared inclusive design principles around the AA (“double A”) and AAA (“triple A”) accessibility ratings, based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG); how to calculate and interpret contrast ratio, the most common quantitative measure of accessibility; as well as step-by-step instructions for auditing campaigns.

Empathy In Design

Considerations for accessibility (which is often abbreviated “a11y” in reference to its starting with an a, ending with a y, and containing 11 letters in between) are around us already in our everyday lives—from the textile protrusions on subway platforms which signal to visually impaired individuals that they are nearing the edge, to the confirming audio that accompanies a lit walk signal at a crosswalk.

Accessibility matters just as much in the digital realm, where we as creators can provide thoughtfully designed experiences that validate our commitment to users and truly help them navigate our assets. (Note: The color we know as “default hyperlink blue,” which is used on this page and has been used on millions of pages since its inception 30 years ago, has an extremely high accessibility rating—this is not a coincidence!)

In this session at Digital Summit, I therefore set out to help marketers learn how to measure and improve the accessibility of their communications—exploring what a11y is, how they can measure it, and how we can all optimize assets to be more legible and more ‘interact-withable’ for more people.

My goal was to encourage leaders to:

1. Consider the necessity and ubiquitousness of a11y solutions in the real world, and refocus this consideration to digital marketing.

2. Learn how to quantitatively audit emails for a11y.

3. Become able to explain this value proposition to stakeholders across an organization.

A Few Key Presentation Slides

Please click here to download a curated selection of slides and key points from various sections in my presentation.