Agencies encouraged to add captions

From: B&T Marketing & Media, Australia - 05 Mar 2003

THE Advertising Federation of Australia is encouraging all advertising agencies to recognise deaf and hearing impaired Australians in the preparation of advertising campaigns.

AFA Executive Director Lesley Brydon said that with almost two million deaf or hearing-impaired Australians, advertisers could not afford to disregard this important market.

“Captioning of TV commercials is not just an important ‘feel good’ community service—it is an integral part of the successful execution of an advertising campaign. Clearly market reach will not be optimised without this facility,” Brydon said.

“We are pleased that a vast majority of our member agencies already include captioning in the development and production of advertising campaigns and we encourage all agencies and advertisers yet to adopt this technology to consider its benefits.”

Brydon said the AFA and the Australian Caption Centre have been building a closer alliance through the AFA Advertising Effectiveness Awards.

Australian Caption Centre marketing manager Karen Williams explained that without captioning, television campaigns would not maximize their effectiveness.

Captioning of TV programs and commercials provides access to television for people who are deaf or hearing impaired by representing the entire sound track as text, usually at the bottom of the screen.

Captions differ from foreign language subtitles because they are coloured and positioned to indicate who is speaking, and provide information on music and sound effects which may be crucial to the understanding of the commercial.

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