egta spoke to Josh Loebner, Global Head of Inclusive Design at VML on industry progress and how WPP’s efforts to unlock new opportunities linked to accessibility through technical and business innovation.
egta: How has the industry’s approach to accessible advertising evolved over the past two years?
Josh Loebner (JL): Two years ago, accessibility was quite limited in scope, and fragmented across processes and teams, and few were in leadership roles. More brands and agencies are creating accessibility leadership roles, and these individuals and teams are establishing accessibility centres of excellence.
egta: What significant milestones or changes have you observed in this period?
Milestones are easily seen in greater visibility of the topic across trade media editorial coverage, on stages at industry events, such as Cannes Lions, and accessibility and representation in adverts anytime of the year, not just during the Paralympics. Innovations are taking shape at the confluence of AI, accessibility, and advertising that were only dreamt about a few short years ago.
Josh Loebner
Global Head of Inclusive Design
VML
egta: What challenges do you still face in making all advertisements fully accessible?
JL: The challenge is multifaceted and extends beyond agencies and brands to include broadcasters. Limitations and variations in the percent of airtime TV broadcasters commit to captioning / subtitles and audio descriptions is a complex problem which fragments further across differing broadcast networks, regional, and country-specific policies and mandates. Further exacerbating the issue is the fact that agencies and brands typically don’t actively incorporate accessibility features such as captions or audio descriptions into TV adverts, and instead that is facilitated by a separate trafficking vendor.
egta: How do you plan to address these challenges in the coming years? How do you measure the impact of accessible advertising on your audience and business outcomes?
JL: WPP is innovating how accessibility is being shaped and has developed a prototype tool that combines AI and accessibility to more easily, economically, and creatively bring the process of audio descriptions into TV adverts. We’re still in the early stages, but our goal is to revolutionize the industry in how accessible advertising is achieved. Our goal is to incorporate accessibility among other readily recognized key performance indicators and metrics typical of ad campaigns.
egta: What reasons do we have, as an industry, to be hopeful when it comes to accessibility?
JL: We’re advancing accessibility much more rapidly, not only due to technology advancements and AI, but through industry leaders establishing accessibility steering committees and working groups allowing more voices to collectively problem solve, align, and strive towards establishing protocols, standards, metrics, goals, and more.
More information
Josh Loebner, Global Head of Inclusive Design at VML, Daniel Hulme, Chief AI Officer at WPP and CEO of Satalia, and Priti Mhatre, Managing Director of Strategic Consulting and AI at Hogarth Worldwide Ltd, spoke about how WPP is working with Microsoft to revolutionize the way advertising content is accessed by visually impaired audiences and the benefits it brings.