Accessibility Concerns for Marketing Professionals
by Nick Hershberger
E-marketing is the process of delivering
information to customers using various technology solutions. In order to reach
customers effectively, the needs of individuals are carefully considered.
Marketers can overestimate the abilities of the typical user, assuming the
average consumer is young and healthy. According to statistics released by the
Census Bureau in 2012, 56.7 million Americans have some type of disability.
Web accessibility removes barriers for disabled
users to access digital media. These barriers can be attributed to a number of
different factors including visual, mobility, auditory, and cognitive concerns.
Marketers can address each one of these issues by applying care and
consideration in the development of online marketing materials.
Visual
Visual concerns include blindness,
color-blindness, low vision and seizures. Visually impaired users sometimes
require the use of software packages that verbalize the contents of a web page.
Other users may simply have low-vision or spotty vision. In these cases, the
colors and font sizes of a digital medium should assist the user in interacting
with the system.
This
banking website does not conform to standard recommendations. Certain text
elements are low contrast, which is difficult to read. The text size is also
small and difficult to read.
Auditory
Auditory concerns for marketers may not seem like an important issue, as the Internet is mostly a visual medium. However, the web has grown more media intensive. For example, a hearing impaired individual is interested in the content of a video on a website and would want to close captioning to help provide context to the video.
Auditory concerns for marketers may not seem like an important issue, as the Internet is mostly a visual medium. However, the web has grown more media intensive. For example, a hearing impaired individual is interested in the content of a video on a website and would want to close captioning to help provide context to the video.
The
Ford website includes demonstration videos with informative voiceovers.
Unfortunately, the videos lack a captioning option and hearing impaired users
will not get the complete experience.
Ambulatory
Using a mouse and keyboard to navigate the web
is second nature to many of us. However, some users are unable to successfully
use a mouse, due to a number of motor control issues. Marketers on the internet
should be sensitive to these concerns by creating user experiences that
accommodate logical and clear options, that can accessed via a keyboard only.
The Priceline.com website does an excellent job allowing keyboard users to navigate
all the search criteria fields; however, the menus to navigate to flights and
other options are unreachable by using the keyboard alone.
Cognitive
There
are many types of cognitive and learning disabilities. To reach these users,
marketers should keep the message of digital media clear, concise, and simple.
Text descriptions should not be overly detailed and should be understandable.
Consistency is key to help users learn how to interact with the digital media.
In
this sample email, the instructions are muddled, poorly presented, and
confusing. Important information is in a small font and is not well explained.
When
designing marketing initiatives for consumers, ask the follow:
- Who are the users?
- What are the activities they want to perform?
- Why are they visiting this website?
Sources:
When designing a website, there should be many things to consider. It is important to have a pleasing easy user interface for most situations. Some people do not understand handicapped imparities unless they are the ones that experiences it themselves first hand. The visually impaired, as you stated in your blog, is a good example of this. Another example that you pointed out are the hearing impaired. There are two members of my family that has a hearing disability. There is a great benefit for having an option for close captioning for the hearing impaired when they are viewing the videos, offline or online. This is one feature that should carry on in the digital era instead of being left behind. Thank you for this information.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. This is an area I feel should get more attention.
ReplyDeleteNick - I think this brings up a lot of good points. I had not even considered the idea before of users with disabilities such as the ones you listed above would also be part of a business or company's target audience. Obviously I’m not trying to exclude them in anyway – it just hadn’t crossed my mind to look at the marketing tactics online that way. It is definitely an area that should be looked at and considered more widely - just as much if not more so than, say, providing a ramp for customers as opposed to stairs to the entryway of a business. If you do not make an attempt to cater to a wider group of potential customers, you could be losing their business and others with the same impairments or disabilities that they have. I think this is a great post you’ve got going on and I hope a lot of people read it and take the ideas with them.
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