Crystal Clear Communications Blog

As marketers, our goal is that everything we produce is accessible to our target audience. That’s why we make message maps and conduct A/B testing to help ensure resonance and accessibility. But is that enough?

Next time you’re in a meeting, look around. One in every five Americans has some kind of reading disability, according to the Learning Disabilities Association of America. In fact, I’ve had several intelligent colleagues inform me of their struggles. Yet in our effort to get people to read our content, we may be turning off the very people we want to capture.

Take the now popular reading time as an example. LinkedIn and many other sites now give a reading time, such as a “2-minute read.” A 2-minute read for whom?

I would guess that by now, the majority of our target audiences have an idea of how long it takes them to read a blog, an article, etc.

So why do we risk upsetting or offending some people by adding a reading time that clearly doesn’t apply to everyone? Is accessibility getting lost in our effort to ensure we’re not taking too much of our audience’s time?

Reading time isn’t the only offender. Small type can be a showstopper. As can fonts with serifs, which are more difficult for many people to read. Color blindness is an issue that affects 5%-8% of men.

Additionally, even fast readers are only scanning our content, as research from the Nielsen/Norman Group shows. Therefore, it benefits all audiences to use plain language, as my business partner George Stenitzer wrote in a recent blog.

I’m confident that all marketers want their marketing assets to be accessible to everyone in their target audience. We just need to give more thought to how we present our marketing content.

Ready to make your marketing more accessible? Here’s a guide from the Arts Marketing Association.

Have questions about marketing and communications? Get answers weekly or email me at ariana@crystalclearcomms.com.