An oversight

Over the course of my marketing career, there have not been enough campaigns produced that effectively reflected the diversity of Australia’s population, nor have there been many (if any) conversations that considered the need for accessibility of marketing communications.

Privileged to create communications for the Australia Post brand for a number of years, (a business with a mandate to serve all Australians), I’d always thought that our marketing outputs were designed well and with good intentions. What I’ve since realised, is that we had blinkers on when it came to understanding how our communication material was able to be consumed by audiences with accessibility needs.

Take for example our ‘Dear Australia’ campaign created during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020. This campaign asked all Australian’s to write a letter detailing their Covid-19 experiences so they could be housed in a time capsule at the National Archives of Australia. I launched this program into the market with gusto, however after a couple of weeks, Australia Post’s Diversity and Inclusion Manager pointed out to me – “Did you ever consider that not everyone is able to write Corrina?”. 

The fact was I hadn’t considered this at all. How appalling, that as a senior communicator for one of the most ubiquitous brands in Australia, I’d not even considered that my campaign could not be participated in by the entire Australian public. 

Fixing it

Brain whirring, I set off to find a solution and in doing so ended up with a much richer and diverse archive, which allowed any form of expression to be included – songs, drawings, voice recordings and letters. It truly became a campaign that captured the experiences of all Australians.

After this, I viewed our communications with a fresh perspective.  Whilst some of the basics were already in place (AA compliance on digital material, captioning on videos and transcripts being made available of long form video), I was sure there was more we could do.

Here in Australia, I was aware of the work undertaken by Belong in 2019. In an Australian first, Belong in audio described its TVC in line with Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

Internationally I found examples of brands doing similarly amazing work. Airbnb’s ‘Online Experiences’ showed people they could travel virtually and connect with Airbnb hosts anywhere in the world and included many accessible experiences like wheelchair workouts with a pro trainer, a cooking class with a deaf teacher, and more.

Google Maps developed a feature to help businesses indicate whether their establishments are accessible to wheelchair users. And in 2022, the United Nations released its ‘Disability-Inclusive Communications Guideline’.  The guideline is intended for use by all UN personnel, no matter their role, with the hope that they will help the UN team to assess and develop their communications to be more accessible, thereby driving broader cultural change within their organisation.

Accessibility opportunity

Looking at communication accessibility as an opportunity rather than a compliance measure, I urged my team and our agency partners to keep this at the front of their minds. New and powerful examples of how we’ve been able to progress Australia Post marketing communications include: the introduction of mandatory alt-text (text alternatives for static images) on all social media posts; the simplification of messaging and creation of large print responses for children with low vision as part of our Santa Mail program; and the creation of audio described television commercials for our 2021 Christmas campaign Spread the Merry (and for all television commercials produced ongoing).

In addition, powered by learnings from our lock down experiences, our events teams created the opportunity for all online event attendees to advise their accessibility requirements on invitations and support materials, as well as including captioning and Auslan translators on webinars.

Reflective advertising

The desire to better reflect and represent all Australians has also extended into our expectations relating to the talent cast for our advertising. While there are no official statistics on diversity in advertising in Australia, US figures from Nielsen show that people with disabilities only comprised 1 per cent of people in ads. There’s no doubt that as an industry, marketing and communications can do more to represent the over 4 million Australians living with a disability.

Our recent ‘Delivering like never before’ campaign includes a wheelchair user as a lead character, a first for our brand and an important step to better represent our customers in a more authentic way.  In another first for Australia Post, this campaign also featured an embedded Auslan interpreter on all connected TV executions, a small change but one that has had a large and positive impact, particularly on our Australia Post team members.

Alongside of the incredible work undertaken by our diversity and inclusion team, our efforts over the past year to create more inclusive communications have helped propel Australia Post to 7^th on the Access and Inclusion index. The index is an external audit conducted independently by the Australian Network on Disability, which aims to provide Australian organisations with a way to assess their current understanding of accessibility and inclusion of people with disabilities across key areas of their business.

It was the first time Australia Post has broken into the top 10, the result of an increase in our score by 14 points year on year to 61/100, exceeding the average score of 36 for most organisations. A major driver of this jump up the rankings is as a result of the changes made to our marketing communications approach, with Communications and Marketing the second highest scoring category (83 per cent, up 5 points year on year) behind Commitment (98 per cent).  

Drive change

So, what’s next? There’s still a lot of work to be done on accessibility at Australia Post and I’m definitely conscious of this – the adoption of good accessibility habits is an ongoing journey and not one to be treated as a short term project. Future programs of work include: the creation of simple English versions of key forms and brochures within our Post Office network; the removal of medicalised language in communication materials that can influence negative attitudes and behaviours toward people with disability, the creation of marketing communications accessible by screen readers and ongoing training for all member of the marketing team on the production of accessible communication.

When I wrote this article, I spent some time scrolling the social media pages of many Australian brands and was stunned by the fact that many still did not have captioning on their videos and did not utilise alt text to describe their images.

Campaigns and material should not discriminate and should not be limiting so that they can’t be experienced by all.  To not create communications that are accessible for everyone seems inherently detrimental to me from a brand, consumer, partner, and employee sentiment perspective. And, with over 4.4 million Australians experiencing disability and over one third of Australian households including a person with disability, to not adopt a mindset that all marketing communications should be accessible ongoing is to severely limit your relevance and reach. 

My message for any marketers reading this is – consider your communications and aim to reduce the deficits within these.  With each small step we can create a ripple of change that repositions accessibility from being a box ticking exercise, to being about meeting the needs of all Australians. Simply said, accessible marketing communications are better marketing communications – for everyone.