At Thursday’s MFA Ex conference in Sydney, members of MFA’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion council (DE&I) provided a wake-up call to the crowd, calling for a more inclusive media landscape. Philippa Moig, Angus McLeod, Asier Carazo and Pawena Kaniah shared heartfelt stories about the importance of inclusion and a case study showing how it can be implemented.
As a Qantas ad played on the big screen, the audio cut off halfway through. The music and dialogue that gave context and meaning to the ad were no longer available to audience members.
“Raise your hand if it made you feel confused,” said Carazo, chief strategy officer at Atomic212.
A large majority of the audience raised their hands.
“This is the reality of millions of people in Australia, people that can’t hear, they can’t see, they are suffering with sensory overload, and we don’t think about them in our media experiences”.
It highlighted the importance of inclusion for those with visible and invisible disabilities, a whopping four million Aussies, or one in six.
“It’s not just logical to include them in those briefs, it’s very certainly the right thing to do,” added Carazo.
Angus McLeod, an investment executive at OMD, and part-time comedian, shared a heartfelt story about an assault that left him deaf.
“On 2 October 2022, I had just finished up a show and met up with some mates afterwards to watch the footy. That night, I was assaulted in Brisbane City, leaving me with a fractured skull and mild traumatic brain injury. I was told that the skull fracture had severed the connection in my middle ear, leaving me profoundly deaf”.
Fortunately, McLeod was a candidate for cochlear implants, a technology that translates audio into electronic pulses the brain can understand.
“While I am incredibly grateful that this technology exists, it’s important to know that my hearing is very different to what it was before. Sometimes I’m left in the dark, not because of choice, but because of something completely out of my control”.
His experience made McLeod acutely aware of the importance of accessibility in media.
Kaniah a media and communications strategist at iProspect said that she only found one campaign that directly approached this issue, “Is This a Can?” by OMD.
“It was a government initiative about empowering women, regardless of the walks of life they came from, to stay active and fit without the fear of judgment,” said Kaniah.
As OMD worked through its audience exploration for this campaign, they realised that the 2 million women in Australia who live with disabilities also deserved to be active and participate in this campaign.
The agency was sensitive in its approach, deciding to approach Vision Australia. Together, they created a podcast series that was specifically targeted and aimed at women in Australia living with a disability.
“Podcasts are nothing new, right? But this one was different because it wasn’t just content, it was representation, and it was hosted by women with real, lived experience, who shared some deep and emotional stories with their audience. As a result of that campaign, it didn’t just inspire its listeners, it created lasting, positive community impact and community engagement,” added Kaniah.
Closed captions and alt text were noted as two of the easy but effective initiatives that can be implemented into media plans, making accessibility a non-negotiable.
Media has the ability to raise awareness for important social initiatives, and if the DE&I panel left us with one thing to think about, it’s that we can all do more on that front.
