Learning articles

Remember how you felt (and how you still feel) when you saw that photo of the Berlin Wall coming down? Or the excitement or fear you felt when you first saw that Jaws poster? You can’t remember any of that if you are blind or partially sighted. Unless someone has written an incredible image description. Which, in most cases, they haven’t.

Alt text is a written description of an image posted online. Blind and partially sighted people use screen readers to read that alt text. Yet appallingly, alt text is either really badly written or, in 95% of cases, not written at all.

We partnered with the RNIB and created a campaign using beautifully written descriptions of five iconic images, without showing the images themselves. Why? To show the devastating loss of experience blind and partially sighted people are forced to live with because the sighted don’t bother to write descriptions of the images we put out into the world. Society, and industries such as ours, are excluding blind and partially sighted people from experiencing those images. Which isn’t good enough.

Our outdoor campaign not only captured attention, but thousands of people captured the QR code which revealed information on what to do next time they upload an image.

Virgin Atlantic has launched a new integrated campaign with creative communications agencies Lucky Generals and Tin Man, centred on how the airline is able to support deaf customers.

Created by Channel 4’s in-house creative time 4Creative, the hero 30-second spot shows one of the channel’s familiar BSL interpreters joined on-screen by one of Virgin Atlantic’s own BSL-trained crew.

Inclusive Design Patterns For 2025 with Vitaly Friedman

This industry-first study proves inclusive advertising drives sales. The study was conducted with leading researchers from Saïd Business School at Oxford University, and leveraged proprietary data provided by Unstereotype Alliance members Bayer Consumer Healthcare, Diageo, the Geena Davis Institute, Kantar, Mars Incorporated, Mondelez International and Unilever.

Disability can affect anyone, very early in life or as a result of illness or accident. It can have more or less significant consequences on the ability to work. Contextual and evolving, it only constitutes a disability in certain environments, under certain conditions, due in particular to the diversity of disabilities and their implications.

As part of a D&I policy within an agency, this subject should be approached through the prism of equal opportunities, inclusion, adaptation and recruitment. To begin, it is relevant to be aware of the different types of disabilities as well as the prejudices surrounding them, such as the incompatibility with performance.

Certain health conditions, whether recognized as disabilities or not, can still be debilitating and, if nothing is put in place, exclusionary for those affected. Establishing an active listening unit is a first step in order to consciously adapt the daily lives of these individuals.