STUDY: NEARLY HALF OF U.S. VIEWERS WATCH VIDEO WITH CAPTIONS

23. 5. 2026 Survey results from U.S., U.K., France, Spain and Germany show captions have become a mainstream viewing behavior in every market.

CHANNEL 4 SHOWS HOW PUTTING ACCESSIBILITY FIRST BENEFITS BOTH CUSTOMERS AND COMMERCIAL WITH CURRYS’

24. 2. 2026 Context Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award 2025 set its brief under the theme “Inclusive by Design”. It asked brands to embed inclusive practices into the creative, rather than at the end of production. The initiative linked that ambition to airtime: £1m of advertising space across Channel 4’s portfolio sat behind the winning campaign. The brief framed the size of the audience affected by sight or hearing loss at nearly 20% of the UK population, putting an access gap into plain planning terms.

ELEVATOR PITCHES MADE REAL: GIVING BLACK ENTREPRENEURS A NATIONAL STAGE

23. 2. 2026 Black-owned businesses in the UK face significant barriers to success. Only 0.24% of venture capital funding reaches Black founders, and one-third of Black entrepreneurs struggle to gain belief in their ventures. Channel 4, in partnership with Lloyds Bank (one of the UK’s largest retail banks), created the Black in Business initiative to address these disparities. Rather than simply highlighting the problem, the initiative addressed it by removing barriers to accessing national television advertising, enabling Black-owned businesses to scale.

WHEN SILENCE SPEAKS LOUDER

22. 2. 2026 Code of Silence was a landmark drama for British television. The show starred Rose Ayling-Ellis, a deaf actress who became famous after winning Strictly Come Dancing, a popular British celebrity dance competition. In the drama, she plays a deaf woman whose exceptional lip-reading skills make her central to a covert police investigation. The production featured cast and crew from deaf, disabled, and neurodiverse communities, with innovative on-screen graphics that visualised how deaf people piece together conversations. ITV saw an opportunity to extend this representation beyond the programme itself and into the commercial break.

ADMEIRA AIRS SWITZERLAND’S FIRST ACCESSIBLE TV SPOT – GILLETTE AD WITH AUDIO DESCRIPTION

26. 10. 2023 Procter & Gamble broadcast a TV commercial with audio description in Switzerland for the very first time. The Gillette commercial is just the beginning of accessible TV advertising in Switzerland. The audio description function, which has been used in feature films at SRG SSR for several years, is now making its way into TV advertising in Switzerland. For example, the consumer goods manufacturer P&G has broadcast a Gillette TV commercial with audio description for the first time.

HOW TO INCREASE REACH BY 15% FOR FREE!

19. 5. 2023 Most brands are missing a trick by failing to include audio descriptions of ads for visually impaired consumers, or closed captions for those with hearing difficulties – yet 15% of the population has some form of these two disabilities. Why it matters It’s the stated aim of Procter & Gamble’s chief brand officer to reach 100% of category buyers, so all P&G brands will simply have to be accessible to all consumers. There’s a straightforward business case, with disabled consumers around the world commanding an estimated $8 trillion in spending power. And that’s quite apart from the emotional connections brands can make with consumers who frequently feel left out and unnoticed. Takeaways