#inclusivityiskey

GAINESVILLE, Fla., - March 28th, 2019 (Swampstratcomm-sp19.tumblr.com) – The American Marketing Association (AMA) publishes insightful and helpful information to people with interest in the advertising and marketing field. However, the information provided by the AMA could be valuable to people looking for a job within the communications industry or are just interested in current technology trends. The AMA’s broad scope allows for array ideas to be discussed on its website and magazine. This week, the AMA’s publishing’s focused on networking, specifically for people who have very limited time on their hands. Another article reflected on architecture and its role in an office space. Furthermore, another recent publication was a complete guide to people seeking jobs within this field. The guide gave plenty of tips and tricks to prospective communications employees. These articles comply with the AMA’s informative and up-to-date sources it continuously posts.

One of the AMA’s articles from earlier this month caught my attention, as it sheds light on the disabled community and the lack of accessible technology available for them. With new technology constantly evolving to have more features, perks, and options, the creators have seamlessly forgotten about the disabled community, creating devices that don’t work in their favor. While these efforts may be unintentional, the recent growth of lawsuits has resulted in heightened awareness and acknowledgment of the issue. Surfing the web is almost virtually impossible for someone with vision impairment and a lack of speech synthesizers or braille displays. An audio bit or a video with no captions or subtitles makes it impossible for someone with auditory impairments to absorb any information.

“The disabled community makes up about one-fifth of the U.S. population – a staggering number of potential consumers. An inaccessible website is akin to a storefront that lacks a wheelchair ramp: Someone may be interested in shopping with you, but you’ve made it virtually impossible for them to do so – at least independently,” (Steimer). This excerpt from this article highlights an important analogy. Storefronts wouldn’t create inaccessible doors and entryways, why should the virtual world be excused from creating these accommodations? In addition, the disabled population is a large market for companies to target. While companies should feel morally obligated to target this market, it’s interesting that they still don’t consider a large number of people they could be acquiring sales from.

“The effort – no matter the size – is worth it, as it opens the opportunity to gain new customers who will appreciate and remember the effort,” (Steimer). Steimer’s perspective couldn’t be any more valid. Creating an accessible website will be time-consuming for any digital designer, but these motives are important and necessary. Inclusivity should be the forefront for all companies creating sellable products. It should be illegal for companies to discriminate against any demographic, regardless of their intentions. Moving forward, there should be stricter rules and regulations put in place, so companies can longer get away with their questionable actions. We clearly can’t rely on people and their morals to do the right thing anymore.

The American Marketing Association centers its work on the current trends in fruition relating to marketing and communications.