Accessible Marketing

Accompanying Virtual Training: Creating Accessible Marketing & Social Media
Please email ahayne23@kent.edu to discuss personalized workshops for your team

DIGITAL MARKETING includes a dizzying amount of media types: videos, graphics, blogs, social media, infographics, content marketing, paid advertising, search engine optimization, catalogs, exhibits...

Rather than show step-by-step instructions for every platform and operating system (which are constantly changing), we're going to share CONCEPTS that you can DRAG & DROP onto any digital marketing project.

Accessibility Concepts for Digital Marketing

Designing and deploying accessible content starts with thinking through the CONTEXT and EXPERIENCE your user might have. Where will they be? What will they be viewing your content on? Can they control playback or captioning?

Study the concepts in the two images below, then choose a specific accessibility issue to learn its digital marketing application. We've grouped all marketing content using the WCAG abbreviation P.O.U.R. (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust), hoping this helps you retain principles that can be applied to any content creation.

Accessibility is about context: WHERE & HOW is the user interacting with your content? Will your content ADAPT well on any device or assistive tech? Have you ENABLED all source accessibility features before publishing content?

Accessibility is about experience: Have you presented your content CLEANLY and CLEARLY? Can MANY TYPES of users have a good experience? Can the user OPERATE and UNDERSTAND your content easily and in the way they choose?

Perceivable Solutions

Start here if you need guidance on issues regarding SEEING and HEARING content. This section covers alt text for images, color contrast, captioning/transcripts, and responsive design/layout for different screen sizes.

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Operable Solutions

Operable solutions focus on correct presentation of TIMED content and clear NAVIGATION. Learn best practices for flashing/blinking content, naming links, headings, bullets, and numbered lists.

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Understandable Solutions

Understandable content is EASY TO UNDERSTAND, with short paragraphs and sentences, no jargon, simple words, plenty of white space, and no ableist language.

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Robust Solutions

Ensuring compatibility with reasonably outdated, current, and future technologies. How to use built-in TEMPLATES (which are usually more accessible than starting from scratch) and avoid trendy but inaccessible UNICODE FONTS.

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Accessible Marketing Checklist

Bookmark and/or print this for quick reference as you learn to create accessible marketing content. Suitable for creating emails, newsletters, live and recorded videos, social media content, and digital displays.

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