Blog | Ad Accessibility Alliance
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Matalan Makes Every Moment Shine This Christmas With "It's Showtime"
Read more about "Matalan Makes Every Moment Shine This Christmas With "It's Showtime""This Christmas, Matalan takes centre stage with “It’s Showtime,” a new multi-channel campaign celebrating the joy, pride, and excitement customers feel when preparing for the festive season. After all, Christmas isn’t just any show – it’s the show and Matalan is here to help its customers make it a masterpiece. Developed in collaboration with McCann Manchester, the campaign continues to deliver on Matalan’s everyday style, quality and value showcasing collections across homeware, womenswear, menswear, and kidswear, positioning the retailer as the go-to destination for creating a show-stopping Christmas.
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Making TV ads accessible: subtitles
Read more about "Making TV ads accessible: subtitles"Advertising should be for everyone, but most ads are not fully accessible to the audience they are reaching. Most TV ads are not currently designed with accessibility in mind or don’t have access services like subtitles or audio description to help make them more accessible.
RNID estimates that 1 in 3 adults in the UK are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. That’s the equivalent of 18 million adults who can’t easily access or understand TV ads.
The easiest way to help make your ad more accessible to this audience is to add subtitles (sometimes called closed captions).
In this deck, find out about subtitle capability on UK TV, and how to easily add subtitles to your ad to maximise your TV campaign's impact.
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McCann launches “Alt By Default” initiative ahead of World Sight Day
Read more about "McCann launches “Alt By Default” initiative ahead of World Sight Day"With 16%* of the global population living with a visual impairment, only 10%** of TV ads worldwide currently include accessibility features. In the UK, the figure is just 1%** – despite more than two million people living with sight loss, a number expected to double by 2050***. To mark World Sight Day, an international event that raises awareness of blindness and visual impairment, McCann’s Alt by Default initiative aims to address this stark imbalance by integrating audio description (AD) into all TV adverts with participating clients and brands wherever possible – setting a new standard for inclusive advertising across the industry.
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Why Disability Must Be at the Heart of Inclusive Advertising
Read more about "Why Disability Must Be at the Heart of Inclusive Advertising"There’s no true diversity in advertising without disability. Despite making up 22% of the UK population, disabled people remain vastly underrepresented in marketing campaigns—appearing in just 0.06% of UK ads.
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Exploring AI-generated audio description: can emerging technologies help expand access to broadcast media?
Read more about "Exploring AI-generated audio description: can emerging technologies help expand access to broadcast media?"As part of our long-standing commitment to improving media accessibility, RNIB commissioned a research study to evaluate the feasibility of using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate audio description (AD) for television content. The aim: to understand whether today’s advanced AI models—particularly those combining video scene analysis and language generation—could help expand AD provision across genres, formats, and platforms.
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Paramount and UK Cinemas Advance Accessibility with Widespread Captioned Screenings
Read more about "Paramount and UK Cinemas Advance Accessibility with Widespread Captioned Screenings"A significant initiative led by Paramount is enhancing the cinema experience for audiences who are deaf or have hearing loss across the United Kingdom. The film studio is placing accessibility at the forefront by ensuring the first UK previews for its slate of upcoming blockbusters are captioned.The move applied to Paramount's major recent releases, including Transformers One, Smile 2, Gladiator II, Sonic The Hedgehog 3, September 5, and Novocaine. This commitment means that the very first opportunity for audiences to see these films was an accessible one.Major UK cinema chains, including Cineworld, Showcase, and Vue, have thrown their support behind the initiative. Taking the effort a step further, they also committed to providing a captioned screening of the latest Mission: Impossible film every day for the first nine days of its release. -
With Not For and VML Centred Accessibility by Embedding Inclusivity at Every Touchpoint
Read more about "With Not For and VML Centred Accessibility by Embedding Inclusivity at Every Touchpoint"Kelly Gordon, co-founder of With Not For, and VML’s EP, Jamie Gazard, discuss making a spot about communication tech starring a deaf actress that made inclusivity a priority from ideation to production
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Channel 4 to mandate captions for all ads in ‘UK broadcasting first’
Read more about "Channel 4 to mandate captions for all ads in ‘UK broadcasting first’"Channel 4 is believed to be the first UK broadcaster to require all adverts on its channel to come with closed captions for deaf and disabled viewers, when the mandate comes into force from spring 2026.
The commitment was announced on Wednesday, when it opened up entries for the 10th year of its Diversity in Advertising Award. -
Channel 4 Sales Deepens Accessibility Commitment as it launches Landmark 10th Diversity in Advertising Award
Read more about "Channel 4 Sales Deepens Accessibility Commitment as it launches Landmark 10th Diversity in Advertising Award"- Building on the Diversity in Advertising Awards’ ten-year legacy, the 2025/26 edition seeks ‘Inclusive by Design’ briefs
- Channel 4 Sales today confirms that from spring 2026 it will be mandatory for all ads to be supplied with closed captions
- In addition, it announces commitments, including for all sponsorship idents to be inclusive by design, and make subtitles standard for all creative partnerships
Channel 4 Sales today launches the tenth edition of its annual Diversity in Advertising Awards, which has gifted £10 million in advertising space to campaigns promoting diversity and inclusion since 2015.
For 2025, the brief remains 'Inclusive by Design,' urging the industry to embed inclusive practices into creative development and remove barriers to engagement with TV advertising.
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Channel 4 to introduce captions mandate on ads
Read more about "Channel 4 to introduce captions mandate on ads"Broadcaster moves to improve the accessibility of ads ahead of 2025 Diversity in Advertising Award