My Personal Journey in Accessible Marketing
Hello! I'm Ivan Wang, the Head of Marketing and PR at Vacayit. I work behind the scenes, creating the content you encounter daily. In my previous role, I served as a marketing executive at Hilton Group. I also earned a degree in International Hotel and Tourism Management from the University of Queensland.
A Journey Towards Inclusive Marketing
“The fundamental purpose of marketing is to create value by developing a variety of offerings to satisfy customer needs”
In this blog post, I want to take you through my journey and share some of the invaluable insights and experiences I've gained from my current role at Vacayit. If you're keen to explore ways to make your marketing more inclusive, I hope the knowledge I've acquired will be helpful.
I embarked on my professional journey in hotel digital marketing, where the emphasis lies heavily on aesthetics and visual appeal. When I thought about accessibility in marketing, my focus centred on the hotel having accessible rooms, flat and wide enough for wheelchair access.
Fast forward to the present, where I've spent the last year and a half at Vacayit. Although I still remain entrenched in the field of marketing, my perspective on accessibility has undergone a profound transformation. I now find myself equipped with a deeper understanding of accessibility considerations, and occasionally, I offer guidance to others on how to infuse more inclusivity into their marketing strategies.
Back to fundamentals
For those unfamiliar with Vacayit, it's an audio tourism platform designed with and for tourists with disabilities. Naturally, as the Head of Marketing, I often encounter a recurring question: "How do you promote a product tailored for blind and low-vision travellers, especially considering the industry’s traditionally heavy reliance on visual marketing strategies and platforms like Instagram?"
This very question weighed on my mind for months after joining Vacayit. Ultimately, I came to the realisation that the core purpose of marketing remains unchanged: it's about creating value by offering a diverse range of solutions that cater to customer needs. In essence, it's all about inclusivity and providing equal access to information.
I've learned that I can still share stunning images, provided I include ALT text, ensuring that when I use words like "beautiful" everyone understands what is beautiful and why it holds that distinction. I can still incorporate videos but include captions and detailed descriptions to engage and accommodate everyone.
Diversifying Representation
When I started at Vacayit, I frequently encountered the challenge of sourcing images that accurately represented people with disabilities. The primary reason was the limited availability of such images, and even when they were available, they often depicted individuals sitting in a park, lacking diversity and a comprehensive portrayal of the disability community.
However, over the past few years, I've noticed a positive trend in both stock image websites and regional tourism image libraries, there has been a noticeable improvement in the availability of images that authentically capture the experiences and diversity within the disability community.
One of the errors I made was in my early approach to selecting images featuring individuals with disabilities. I often defaulted to images of wheelchair users. I am not suggesting that featuring wheelchair users in the image is inappropriate, but rather highlighting the inaccuracy of selecting such images solely because they represent the most "visible" form of disability.
As marketers, we all understand it's imperative to take our audience into account when crafting character representations, as viewers tend to favour those they can personally relate to. Therefore, it's crucial to recognise that not all individuals with disabilities exclusively identify as wheelchair users. By focusing solely on one group, we risk overlooking the vast array of stories and perspectives that deserve to be heard and depicted.
The Shift 20 Initiative is a perfect example of a company working towards increasing representation of people with disabilities, inclusion and accessibility in marketing and communications.
Inclusive Language
The more I read the inclusive language guidelines, the more nervous I get that I may say the wrong words or phrases. I can't help but wonder if it's not just me but perhaps a common concern shared by many.
However, my perspective shifted significantly after engaging in conversations with co-workers, friends, and followers with disabilities. I learned that people often have specific preferences regarding how they want their disabilities to be referred to, sometimes even differing from the prescribed terms in the guidelines.
This insight leads me to a simple yet invaluable piece of advice: approach your content with mindfulness, and when interacting with someone directly, ask them how they prefer to be referred to. If a person with a disability deviates from the inclusive language guidelines, respect their choice. Treat others as you'd like to be treated.
Start Today:
For most services or products, accessibility marketing makes sense, even in a purely capitalist world. It expands your potential audience significantly while requiring little learning and effort. It simultaneously enhances your search engine optimisation (SEO) and makes your content easily accessible to a broader and more diverse audience.
Social media and content platforms actively enhance accessibility on their platforms. Emerging technologies, such as automatically-generated captions and AI-powered alt text, are simplifying the process of creating accessible marketing and inclusive marketing content.
In the pursuit of accessibility, progress is often better than perfection. We can and should take incremental steps towards making our marketing materials more accessible. Small changes, like adding alt text to images or using simple, clear language, can have a significant impact.
As marketers, we have the power to make a difference by ensuring that our content can be accessed and enjoyed by all.