How to Incorporate Accessibility into your Marketing Strategy

On Friday, 21st March 2025, I was joined by Katie Merrien from Commuikate Design to discuss how you can incorporate accessibility into your marketing strategy. 

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Katie Merrien: Katie has a visual messaging business called Communikate Design; she helps people tell people things. Turning complicated and written information into animations, illustrations and graphic designs. She also provides simplified copywriting services to help people understand the written word. 

Mel Johnson: Mel runs a business called the Sussex Social,  She help businesses and individuals navigate their marketing messages, clarify what they need to say and where they need to say it, and ensure any marketing activity fits within the time, money and resources they have available.

 

Accessibility in Content Marketing is not a trend that is going away. 

It’s a hot topic at the moment, but it’s not a trend. Being more inclusive and accessible will be massively beneficial for your business. However, upcoming legislation later this year means that this needs to be taken seriously. It’s not just a box-ticking exercise. 

During this conversation, we share:

• What accessibility really means.
• How it can impact your business.
• Some things you can implement right now to make your content more accessible. 

What do we mean by Accessibility in Content Marketing?

Often, when we think about accessibility online, we think about people with visual or hearing impairments. But it is about all disabilities.  Accessibility is essentially making sure that everybody can access what they need, and accessibility applies to everybody. If you put it into context, everybody has accessibility needs, and those needs can change throughout people’s lives and on a daily basis. 

It’s not just people with physical disabilities. It’s also for people who are neurodivergent, and that can include things like autism, ADHD or dyslexia. But also people who have lower levels of literacy or a different first language. And people who have changing access news or temporary access needs due to an injury or an operation. 

So, there are lots of different reasons that someone might need to access things in a different way or to have more accessible information and services. It also gives people a choice about how they want to consume our content, promoting inclusivity, which will really benefit your business. 

How will improved Accessibility in Marketing Benefit your Business?

It’s estimated that 1 billion people on the planet, so 15% of the global population has a disability. As a business, if you’re not inclusive, that’s an awful lot of people to shut out. This also has a knock on effect.

People who have a relationship with people who say they struggle with your website content or accessing your content will see you in a poor light, which will have a negative impact on your business. If you are small or growing this can be really detrimental to your business. 

It’s also becoming increasingly important to demonstrate that you promote the values you share as a business. There is a need to be transparent, if you say you are an ethical and inclusive business and this doesn’t feed into the content you put out you are going to get caught out. 

From a legal perspective the European Accessibility Act is also coming into force in June; this applies to any organisations that are supplying services in Europe. In the UK we have the Equality Act, which has been in place since 2010. That legislation says you can’t discriminate against people and covers content. 

But regardless of the law, it’s still important to make your content accessible to people. Otherwise, they will go to your competitors who do. You’ll be losing revenue without even knowing it, as people won’t be able to access your services. 

It’s estimated that the Purple Pound (the name given to the money that can be spent by the disabled community in the UK is £274 billion. That’s a lot of potential revenue.

It’s also ethical not to discriminate against them. A lot of people become a member of the disabled community within their lifetime because non-disabled people will get disabilities as they get older and go through different life events. So, when you design your marketing strategy to be accessible, you are actually designing things for your future self. 

We would be horrified if we saw on the news that someone couldn’t access something like the theatre because they were in a wheelchair. The same should apply to your content. 

Essentially, accessibility and inclusivity are the right things to do; incorporating these things into your marketing validates your values, ethics, and what you stand for as a brand.

How can you make your content more inclusive?

There are a lot of things you can do behind the scenes.

On your website, you can:

• Use alternative text (alt text), which essentially adds clear descriptions to each photo. if your website is accessible. This will also help you rank better in search over time. This is also applicable to your social media and email marketing content. Not only does it help the people consuming your content, but it will also teach the search engines what to do with that content. 
• Simplify your written content: People scan when they read, and need it to be simple when they land on your website. Keeping things simple – will keep people their for longer. 
• Combine Text with Imagery: Studies show that combining imagery with words will make your content easier to understand and more memorable. 
• Write for low literacy levels: 6.6 million people in the UK have low literacy levels. Which means they have a reading age of below 9. Audio and voice aids can help with this. But the most important thing is to simplify your writing – the tabloid newspapers famously write for a reading age of 8. 
• Use fewer words: Even if you are communicating with people in your industry, fewer words and less jargon are more accessible and acceptable—think about how you would explain something to someone outside of your industry.
• Make use of the prompts available to you. Lots of software will now prompt you to use alternative text and fewer words. But make sure you use this as a prompt and check everything. 
• Use written image descriptions: These shouldn’t just be kept for alternative text. You should also add these under the pictures or at the end of a social media post. This helps people who can’t access a screen reader due to digital poverty or because they are on their phone. They might be in a really bright environment or somewhere where images are loading slowly. Having a written image description means that people can still get all the information they need from you.
• Caption Videos and use voice-overs for Audio Descriptions: It makes your video content easy to consume.

If you do these things from the outset, they will quickly become second nature and easy to incorporate into your content.

This blog was adapted from a conversation between Melanie Johnson and Katie Merrien on LinkedIn if you would like to view the original content you can do so by clicking here.

If you do have any questions or comments please email melanie@thesussexsocial.co.uk.