Do you want to boost your business’s orders and sales? Then, consider making your marketing and advertising messages accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities.
This is because making marketing content accessible to people with disabilities helps you reach more people, and reaching more people can potentially lead to more sales and subscriptions for your business.
Digital signage offers numerous opportunities for delivering advertising messages to individuals with disabilities. This post explores how to make digital signage more accessible to this demographic. It outlines key strategies for improving visual, auditory, cognitive, and physical accessibility.
1. Use clear font and good contrast
Clear fonts, big font sizes, and high contrast in digital signage content improve readability for individuals with visual impairments.
Text in digital signage stands out better and is easier to read if there’s a high contrast between its colour and the background. Also, while certain decorative and stylised fonts can be difficult to decipher, some (like San-serif fonts) are more legible and easily read, even from a distance. Additionally, the bigger the font, the easier it is to read.
Thus, to improve accessibility for people with low vision, ensure digital signage content features clear fonts, large font sizes, and high contrast between text and background.
2. Provide audio descriptions of visual content
Converting visual information into audio format improves the visual accessibility of digital signage content, making it more accessible to individuals with low vision.
Digital signage focuses on using captivating visuals to communicate information to target audiences. However, people with visual impairment may be unable to consume and understand such visual information.
Converting visual information to audio descriptions they can listen to can help such individuals consume and understand the content.
Therefore, consider incorporating visual-to-audio and text-to-speech functionality to enable individuals with visual impairments to receive audio descriptions of digital signage content.
3. Integrate braille
Braille labels and overlays can be used with digital signage screens to make content more accessible to people with low or no vision.
People who cannot see receive messages in braille. So, integrating braille into digital signage screens is one way to make digital signage accessible to these people.
Consider having braille labels by digital signage displays, which provide information about the content displayed digitally.
You may also attach braille overlays on the surface of the digital display to provide braille translations of the content to allow people who cannot see to access the information.
4. Use closed captions
Closed captioning makes digital signage more accessible to people with hearing impairments by converting audio content into text that these people can read while watching the visual content.
Closed captioning displays textual representations of spoken dialogue, sound effects, and other audio elements on a screen. This helps people with hearing impairments understand the audio content of digital signage messaging even if they cannot hear it.
5. Ensure appropriate placement and height
Positioning digital signage displays in the right places and at appropriate heights makes them more accessible to people with mobility impairments and low stature.
Placing digital signage in the right areas prevents physical barriers that can obstruct the views of individuals. Also, people who use wheelchairs or other mobility aids can easily access interactive digital displays without having to walk around obstacles.
You should also consider placing the digital signage at an appropriate height. This ensures that people who use wheelchairs, assistive technology (like screen readers or magnification devices), or are of smaller stature can easily access the interactive displays and engage with the content.
6. Keep digital signage content simple
Keeping content simple makes digital signage more accessible to people with cognitive and visual disabilities.
Complex content can be overwhelming or difficult to comprehend for people with cognitive disabilities. So, keeping content simple makes digital signage aid comprehension for these individuals.
In addition, people with visual impairments often use screen readers to read digital text. And it can be challenging for these devices to navigate and interpret complex content. Conversely, simple content makes it easy for people with visual impairments to consume digital content using screen readers.
Therefore, one way to make digital signage more accessible to people with disabilities is to keep the content simple by using clear headings, easy-to-understand language, logical organization, and simple visuals.
Also, avoid unnecessary jargon, cluttered layouts, and flashing graphics.
7. Embrace multinodal presentation
Multinodal presentation in digital signage enhances accessibility for people with disabilities by accommodating various sensory modalities and communication preferences.
Multinodal presentation refers to providing the digital signage content through multiple channels (such as visual, auditory and tactile) simultaneously.
This helps you provide alternatives catering to diverse accessibility needs. For example, when you have content with visual cues and audio descriptions, the audio descriptions can provide access to visual content for people with visual impairment, and the visual cues can provide access to audio content for people with hearing impairments.
Also, presenting digital signage content through multiple modalities reinforces the information, which can make it easier for individuals with cognitive disabilities to understand.
Conclusion
More and more businesses are embracing digital signage today, as the technology helps them get their message to their target audience more effectively.
When implementing digital signage, it’s important to make it accessible to people with disabilities. This is not just a matter of complying with regulations; it also helps you reach more people and potentially boosts sales.
Thankfully, the strategies above will help you make digital signage more accessible to people with disabilities.
While at this, know that the foundation of any successful digital signage implementation is reliable digital signage software like Luna Screens. Luna Screens has optimal uptime, ensuring your digital screens will not be blank when they should be beaming content to your audience.
Plus, Luna Screens is a simple software that even people with zero technical skills can use to create visually stunning digital signage content.
