25: Why accessible communications is a priority for comms pros with George Coleman, Co-Founder, CEO, Current Global

Shownotes: "According to the World Health Organisation over a billion people, around the world have some form of disability. And with an ageing population it's estimated that more than 2 billion people will need at least one assistive communication or memory or hearing aid over the next 10 years. And here in the UK, it's expected that around 20% of the population will experience communication difficulty at some point in their lives. From a commercial perspective people with disabilities as a global community, collectively have combined purchasing power more than $8 trillion. So, not only is that a big audience to exclude, it's also an audience that certainly for consumer brands has a significant amount of money to spend" For the 25th episode of The Elephant in the Room podcast I spoke with George Coleman, Co-Founder and CEO of Current Global on the recent launch of the 'Accessible Communications guide' in partnership with the PRCA. In the session we spoke about 👇🏾 👉🏾The meaning of inclusive communications; key findings of the survey Current Global commissioned in early 2021; the 'Accessible Communications' guide and why it is important for the PR and Communications Industry; the business imperative or moral imperative; best practice and early adopters Memorable Passages from the episode: 👉🏾 Put simply inclusive communications means communications that are accessible to everyone. But we see everyday content is published that is inaccessible to many people. Campaigns are launched every day that aren't designed to be inclusive of people of all abilities. And disabilities come in many forms, visible and unseen. For us in the communications industry, the disabilities that we are most concerned with in terms of ensuring our communications can reach them, are those people with visual hearing, cognitive and speech impairments. According to the World Health Organisation over a billion people, around the world have some form of disability, that's a lot. And with an ageing population it's estimated that more than 2 billion people will need at least one assistive communication or memory or hearing aid over the next 10 years. And here in the UK, it's expected that around 20% of the population will experience communication difficulty at some point in their lives. That's a huge audience to either exclude by default or by design. And also from a commercial perspective people with disabilities as a global community, collectively have combined purchasing power more than $8 trillion. So, not only is that a big audience to exclude, it's also an audience that certainly for consumer brands has a significant amount of money to spend. 👉🏾 So the objective of the survey was to explore the lived experience of how people with disabilities consume media and content online. So through one of our sister agencies in the Interpublic group, we conducted research amongst 800 people in the UK and the US who self-identified that they have impairments and disabilities. And that research is super interesting, it told us that people with disabilities readily consume all forms of content online. Use social media, video content, films, podcasts, audio books, streaming music, you name it. So the type of content and the volume of content they consume is very much in line with the broader population. 👉🏾 And sometimes the preconceptions we might have about what kind of content, someone with a certain kind of disability may consume are often wrong. We found that 98% of people with a visual disability consume visual content at least once a week or more often. We can't presume that a certain type of content is going to be more popular with a certain audience. But the research did reveal that the majority of people with disability do struggle with accessibility. We found that more than half 54%, have to use assistive tools every day. But there's a significant number that would like to have assistive tools, but can't afford them or don't know how to...