Ad accessibility. It’s been a priority for ISBA since it was raised by our Inclusion Network at the end of 2022. There are 18 million people in the UK who have a sight and/or hearing impairment. That’s a population double the size of London that advertisers are missing by not having subtitles or audio description.

Almost three years since we first started talking seriously about ad accessibility, I’m proud to say we’ve done a lot.

In 2023, we established the UK Broadcast Taskforce, with the support of the Responsible Marketing Advisory. We’ve been working cross-industry with brands, agencies, our sister trade bodies, broadcasters, delivery partners, the RNID and the RNIB to understand the barriers to having access features and how to overcome them. 

The taskforce is building a capability grid so that media planners and advertisers can understand where their ads with access features can be sent and played out; as well as determining metrics to understand how many ads are currently being made accessible with the use of subtitles and audio description to give a baseline of accessibility to grow from.

With Union des Marques in France, we reconvened what is now known as the Ad Accessibility Network under the auspices of the World Federation of Advertisers. The network is working towards ad accessibility in Europe, aiming to provide templates to be used in other global markets. The output has been the launch of the Ad Accessibility Hub. This hub brings together useful information on what ad accessibility is, access features available, case studies, news articles and lots more information.

We also established a Digital Taskforce that works with tech providers and digital platforms to understand the challenges specific to them, with the view to producing a capability grid mirroring the one developed for broadcast.

This is just the start. There is still so much to do.

Last year, Channel 4 ran a campaign to make their broadcast of the Paralympics the most accessible yet, offering to provide subtitles to any brand advertising during the Paralympics. At its peak, 60% of ads were provided with Closed Captioning subtitles (this is where they can be turned on and off by the viewer), but sadly dropped to 35% after the Paralympics. Pre-Paralympics, approximately 25% of ads were provided with Closed Captioning subtitles. The challenge is how we can increase this. One of the goals of the Ad Accessibility Network is to support the ad industry in increasing the proportion of TV ads featuring subtitles in the UK from 31% in Q4 2024 to 40% in Q4 2025.

Awareness is still the biggest barrier, so my call to action is: ask about access features! It doesn’t matter where in the industry you work, be it for a brand, agency, broadcaster, tech provider or digital platform – ask about what access features are being considered in your work and at your workplace.

Everyone should have the opportunity to experience an ad in its entirety. Access features are a meaningful step towards this.

Photo Credit: Bronac McNeill

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