Being visually impaired, Robin Christopherson, head of inclusion at AbilityNet, has to grapple with numerous challenges, one of which he shared with his audience at a recent industry conference, leaving them (and me) in a state of confusion.
He asked the crowd to decipher a verbal CAPTCHA code that was designed to verify human from computer. It was so muffled, the code was impossible to determine. In doing this, Robin had given the audience an insight into his world: a world many of the attendees couldn’t relate to. Most marketers don’t know what customer experience is like for those with a disability, let alone spend time improving it. Here, Robin explains why B2B marketers can no longer ignore the issue.
“The platforms and devices people access content on are getting really good, and accessibility has a much higher profile now than in recent years. But the everyday web developers and marketers are still not riding this wave. Often it’s not even on their radar,” Robin divulges.
"Around 90% of websites and all digital channels are inaccessible; they don’t even meet the basic level of accessibility"
Robin also paints a rather bleak picture of the current inclusivity landscape within marketing, revealing: “Around 90% of websites and all digital channels are inaccessible; they don’t even meet the basic level of accessibility.”
Shockingly, a huge majority of digital offerings are majorly missing the bar, failing to meet the basic level of legal compliance (known as single A). “They’re not even within spitting distance of something that will be inclusive, consumable, attractive and useful to a massive segment of their potential client base,” he remarks.
It’s an issue that could be simply rectified. In most cases, there only needs to be a slight tweak made to adapt common practice to a more inclusive approach. Businesses have cottoned on to the rewards of this alteration and are competing in a way that can only be likened to an arms race. “The banks are falling over each other to do the most in terms of accessibility,” Robin elaborates. “The BBC has always been good, so while it won’t make headline news like a hurricane, there’s a lot of stuff going on out there. Still, it’s so easy not to see it if you’re not looking in the right place.”
The B2B demographic
Robin pinpoints an attitude in B2B as the crux of the problem. “You might’ve not heard of accessibility, you might’ve not got up to speed with it yet and you might not think it applies to you because you’re B2B and you haven’t got disabled customers. But you have, people with disabilities are decision-makers, budget holders and on the c-suite – they’re not stupid. Get rid of that assumption, because it’s wrong.”
"Statistically, one in five people of working age will acquire a disability during their working life."
Statistically, one in five people of working age (18 to 67-years-old) will acquire a disability during their working life. That likelihood increases with age, meaning the more experienced members of your workforce are most likely to be susceptible. “Assuming that c-level people, upper management, decision-makers and budget holders are typically towards the upper end of working age, then the prevalence is going to be higher there,” Robin explains.
Another assumption is that improving accessibility is something that purely benefits disabled clients. “Your next client, who’s going to sign on the dotted line of a multi-million pound contract, could open your marketing message on a small screen on a sunny day and not see your message because the colour contrast wasn’t sufficient or you chose the wrong font. Don’t count upon them having a disability with a capital D,” Robin warns. “They can still be disabled because of the situation they’re in when they open your message.”
Benefits
According to Robin, inclusive marketing will achieve four key benefits:
1. Better SEO – A fully accessible code will increase your searchability. You can reap SEO benefits from accessibility by using alternative text on images, providing a proper heading structure and not hiding content within images. If your content can achieve this it means your marketing is fit for purpose.
2. A cross-platform offering – Little effort is required to ensure the content and functionality of your marketing can be used on multiple devices. Devote some time to access your content on different platforms with various screen sizes, even a voice-only scenario such as the Amazon Echo. This means you’ll be able to optimise the look and feel across a variety of platforms.
3. Ensure legal compliance and uphold ethics – An ethical standpoint is imperative as there’s much legislation around accessibility. If you aren’t inclusive, your company could be clamped with a hefty fine. Most companies settle out of court and pay those involved to keep quiet. But quite often, people take the pay-out and still go to the media, so this can become a brand reputation and PR issue.
4. Higher audience visibility – Inclusivity isn’t just about disabled access, it’s primarily about having the best visibility you could possibly have. Everyone will experience times when visibility needs to be above average – like when reading something on a phone in bright light. If you’re not able to provide extreme visibility within your marketing, readers simply won’t be able to access your content under those circumstances.
“Ensuring you’re mobile-worthy, have extreme UX, and that you’ll be compliant and fit for purpose, are just the right things to do,” Robin summarises.
ROI and tech costs
A measurable factor of accessible marketing is the number of customer service calls, and customer satisfaction levels. “The whole point about inclusive design is that you’re maximising UX. When you maximise UX – regardless of need or environment – it’s going to be easier for everyone to use. Businesses with inclusive marketing will do surveys of their clients and find they’re getting better feedback.”
Although a fearful assumption for many is that improved UX will come at a cost, accessibility can deliver significant ROI. “If you build accessibility from square one, on a new web build, it’s calculated to be between 2% and 5% additional cost. It’s certainly not going to double the cost of the campaign,” elaborates Robin.
The word ‘tech’ strikes a similar fear into any marketing budget holder, but the technological requirements of inclusive marketing don’t demand extravagant investments. If you want to go the extra mile, embedding a text-to-speech widget allows devices to read out your content when you hover over a paragraph. “There are a number of third-party widgets that you could add on,” Robin says, also pointing out many of them are free or extremely cheap.
Once accessibility is established within your common practice, costs are likely to fall. Techniques such as creating an HTML email template that only requires a change of copy, and training your staff on how to use alternative text, will also aid reduce costs and time.
“Do an A/B test, get your marketers to send out content half with and half without accessibility and see how it affects your ROI,” Robin challenges, addressing those sceptical of inclusivity’s benefits. “This is stuff that’s testable and reproducible. People do A/B testing anyway on marketing campaigns.”
Building inclusivity into your marketing
Robin advises that when outsourcing marketing to agencies, you should ask them to put their money where their mouth is. “Ask for the end product to be accessible and inclusive, ask for examples of recent projects they’ve done, where they’ve delivered to accessibility guidelines. Every company will tell you they can do it when the client asks for it, but nine times out of 10 the end product turns out not to be accessible because a) the company weren’t up to speed when they said yes, b) they found out it takes a bit longer than the duration of a campaign to get up to speed, and c) they’ll just ignore it and tell the client it’s accessible as they know the client probably won’t check.”
This problem doesn’t just reside within agency marketing, it can easily be found in-house. Robin warns not to allocate inclusivity as a job for ‘Joe in the corner’ to read up about because once he leaves, your entire accessibility plan will dissolve and you’ll be back to the starting line. “Giving the responsibility to one person implies you’re just bolting it on as an exercise,” Robin points out. “You need to flip it 180 and say it’s about an inclusive plan for every customer and everything involved in your marketing campaign. It needs to be incorporated into everything you do.”
Looking at the future of inclusive marketing, it’s clear that voice technology has been quietly building momentum, not only in terms of accessibility but in general user trends. “I think it will be absolutely massive,” Robin predicts. B2B marketers will need to think about the trajectory toward voice-orientated marketing, which, in turn, will naturally be more inclusive. “You’ve got the intelligence of virtual assistance and the simplicity of a natural interface: voice in, voice out. Amazon is going to be bringing out some glasses with Alexa built in, so you don’t even have to be at home; you can be out and about and just talk .”
“It will take effort but it’s more than worth it,” Robin concludes. “As long as people remain uninterested and disengaged they’re going to provide a poor offering that isn’t fit for purpose in this extreme computing age. They’re not going to stand out. They’re not going to be competitive.”
