In 2018, I landed my first job in the media industry as an intern for SCA and soon after I managed to start making a dollar working on the promotions team, writes Angus McLeod, senior planning/trading executive, Atomic 212°.
I loved the media industry immediately, the people, working around talent and not to mention the never-ending line of freebies.
I had my eyes set on becoming a radio host for a couple of reasons: I loved performing and knew what it meant to the wider community having listened to it growing up. I figured the best way to get on radio, however, was to become a personality that people wanted to hear. Unfortunately, my applications to be in The Bachelor and Australian Survivor didn’t work out, so I turned to stand-up comedy at the end of 2020.
Two years down the track, I had been performing regularly with enough material to keep a crowd engaged. On October 2 2022, I did a gig in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley and then met up with some mates to watch the NRL Grand Final. Later that night I was assaulted on the street, leaving me with a fractured skull, severing my middle ear and rendering me profoundly deaf.
Fortunately, I was a perfect candidate for bilateral cochlear implants, a device capable of translating audio into electronic pulses the brain can understand. While I am incredibly grateful for this technology, my hearing is not the same as it once was; put simply, my hearing isn’t very good. I am often confused in a group setting and need to ask “Sorry can you say that again?” a lot (or I will just laugh and hope what they said was a joke). But if I’m in a space where I can’t ask you to repeat yourself or simply don’t have the courage to speak up, I’m sometimes left in the dark.
Every day, either in the workplace or consuming media, I face a world where vital information can be missing, sometimes without me even realising, not by choice, but because of something out of my control.
You might be thinking “Nice sob story Angus” but I’m not the only one: there are many people in Australia who are unable to consume media the way it’s intended. With one in six Australians living with some sort of disability – that’s over four million people – it’s a real and important issue.
I completely understand that many people feel there isn’t much they can do to help tackle this problem. How can you affect change when you don’t have control over media and marketing content as well as there being more senior people making the calls. But remember: Rome wasn’t built in a day! The most important thing you can do is to stay aware of who your audience is – both now, and as your career evolves – and make sure your work reflects that.
If there’s one thing you take away from this, it’s that where there is diversity, there is opportunity. By educating ourselves about the needs of all our consumers we can create more effective campaigns. In my case, it will mean I can understand the ad better and your client will be highly regarded among an audience that needs or cares about accessibility. This responsibility doesn’t just fall on agencies or clients either; politely ask your sales reps what accessibility features their product offers. Eco-friendly practices largely exist because brands want to be associated with it and regardless of whether its virtue signalling or genuine, it helps. Accessibility is no different.
Meta and Google already have accessibility features like alternative texts and captions ready to use. Scentre Group, QMS and SBS are investing in accessibility features such as audio descriptions, closed captions and subtitling, so we need to recognise these efforts and make them a consideration in our media planning and buying as a way to better target all consumers.
While it’s a shame that it took a head knock for me to see this, as a media professional, it made me more aware of not only the opportunities but the importance of accessibility in media.
