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How to make web accessibility a part of digital marketing efforts

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How to make web accessibility a part of digital marketing efforts

After being diagnosed with dyslexia in the final semester of my undergraduate degree nearly 40 years ago, the issue of accessibility has always been on my mind. I think of all the issues I have faced when it came to correctly reading various materials — including advertising.

I was thrilled to be present 25 years ago when Sir Tim Berners-Lee first announced the Web Accessibility Initiative back in April 1997. But while awareness of accessibility issues may have increased and various government legislations have mandated it (for some), anyone involved in the field of accessibility knows that digital campaigns as a whole are lacking.

Many people don’t think about accessibility beyond seeing ramps added to buildings. When they find themselves on crutches or using a wheelchair, only then do they become concerned with physical accessibility.

Accessible design — when combined with advances in technology that may hinder accessibility and an aging population who can no longer read small print — is becoming (and should be) front-of-mind for everyone in the marketing community.

I interviewed three accessibility authorities on the subject to find out the current state of things and the best way to ensure that accessibility becomes part of all digital projects. 

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Our experts are:

What percentage of digital campaigns do you feel involve any level of accessibility thought and or testing?

The experts responded in an almost unanimous response of “none to almost none”. Evans was the most optimistic, estimating no more than 10% while Scudamore estimated 5%. She went on to expand:

“I am still seeing light grey fonts, red fonts, and other colors of fonts that do not have the high contrast that makes it easy for everyone to see. Many ads have very small fonts that also make them hard to read. Inaccessible content is still far too common. Many landing pages pop up over the website, and many pop-ups, landing pages and shopping carts are not reachable without a mouse, which makes them inaccessible.”

What is the most common aspect of accessibility that digital marketers forget?

Berg stressed: 

“It’s more of a lack of training than being forgetful or neglectful. Marketers are focused on able-bodied target markets and SEO and less inclined to consider how people access content. There’s a gigantic segment of the population using assistive technology or accessibility settings on their computers and mobile devices whose needs are ignored. They are simply not getting promotions because there are barriers preventing them from accessing content.”

Evans emphasized: 

“The most common aspect of accessibility that digital marketers forget is using the headings on blog posts and web-based content. They tend to enter headers and subheaders, and then format them to look the way they want. This deprives their content of search engine juice.

Search engines give a higher priority to headers and subheaders than using proper headings as in <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc. When you don’t use headings, the headers are treated like a paragraph. 

Think about reading an article in the newspaper or online. Do you scan the headlines, subheadings, images, and bullets? Most of us do. It’s how we get the lay of the land. Online content with <h#> headings provide the lay of the land for people using screen readers. Without them, they can’t skip around the content.”

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Dig deeper: The cost of ignoring website accessibility


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Have you ever seen a digital campaign where you felt the marketers and designers did a good job from an accessibility perspective?

Both Evans and Berg couldn’t think of a single campaign that did a good job with accessibility, Scudamore did identify a single one:

“U.K. Unilever a few years ago. From their ad campaigns to their site, they did a really nice job and a seamless experience from the ad to the landing page to the sale. They have slipped a bit. I think there have been some leadership changes there, and perhaps accessibility isn’t the priority it still should be.

PurpleTuesday.com is also a good example. However, if you use the WAVE Evaluation Tool it will appear that the site has errors. It doesn’t. This shows that tools can only test a site through math, accessibility evaluations need both tools and people to review. We need marketers to up their game and knowledge about accessibility so we don’t rely on automated tools that have varying degrees of accuracy.”

If you could make digital marketers and designers implement a single aspect or key aspects of accessibility into their campaigns, what would it be? How could they test it to be sure they did it correctly?

Evans recommends looking at color contrast: 

“Campaigns are usually very visual. So, a single aspect I’d recommend they check is the color contrast. They can do that easily with a free color contrast tool like Colour Contrast Analyser.”

Berg also encouraged the use of tools for testing:

“Imagine what your campaign sounds like without the visuals. The bulk of the delivery is with the use of images, UI layout, calls to action and text. Without images, would you know the purpose of the promotion? Are the images described with alt text?

Use a built-in browser web dev tool extension to remove all images and see if there is anything left to communicate the promotion and then provide the opportunity in multiple ways, such as text, links, buttons with your keywords and verbs.”

Scudamore highlighted that accessibility testing shouldn’t be an afterthought:

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“Brands must bring people with various abilities to the table at the start of the development of any campaign, website, app, etc. They must keep them on board to test as the project develops.

As an industry, we have got to stop wasting money trying to retrofit poorly developed projects. Too many brands and agencies lose time and opportunity by not considering accessibility as an imperative (as opposed to being an option, at best — or ignored, at worst).”

Dig deeper: Optimizing the online experience for disabilities improves it for all customers

Tools are tools and the most important tool any digital marketer has is the one located between their ears. That said, some handy utilities/tools to provide information to our brains were provided.

Scudamore recommends “cozying up with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Each step of the way. Every time there is a function or a measurable goal, we need to check how it should be done accessibly with the WCAG” as well as a contrast tester plugin from WebAim.org.

Berg also recommended WebAim.org and their WAVE browser extension. She also maintains a list of recommended resources.

Evans provided the following list:

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  • W3C Easy Checks (manual review).
  • Use a color contrast analyzer for color contrast.
  • For web content, WAVE Browser Extensions, WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool, and/or Accessibility Insights for Web using the FastPass option.
  • For docs, Microsoft Word’s built-in accessibility checker.
  • For presentations, Microsoft PowerPoint’s built-in accessibility checker
  • Grackle has multiple tools

Berg’s final suggestion:

“This is not about features. It’s about delivering promotions in ways that more people will understand, perceive, and be motivated to choose. They can’t make decisions when they can’t see, hear, or comprehend marketing content and page layouts.

View your digital marketing strategies on as many computers and mobile devices as possible. Turn the page from portrait to landscape view. Magnify the page up to 200%. Be sure your marketing investment is not a big content blob when the page is requested with practices you may not have considered.”

Evans made the point, “If you want to reach more people, then make your content accessible.”

This was substantiated by Scudamore. As she pointed out:

“The American Institutes for Research estimates the spending power of people with disabilities in the United States to be $490 billion in disposable income for workers aged 16 to 64 — the after-tax dollars for basic necessities such as housing, food, and clothing. In the marketplace, PWD — as well as their families, friends, and advocates — wield considerable spending power.”

Dig deeper: How to make your content more accessible to the visually impaired

Incorporating accessibility in digital marketing efforts

It is this untapped market where we can expand the reach of our digital marketing efforts to not only increase revenues but increase our customer base.

If we are the first to tap into an untapped audience and do a great job, we’ll also create loyal customers. It’s time to take the advice of our accessibility experts and start including accessibility as part of our digital marketing efforts.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.

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About The Author

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Alan K’necht an independent SEO, social and analytics consultant, a public speaker, award-winning author and a corporate trainer (SEO, social media marketing and digital analytics).

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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