Raising Awareness
Posted 24 Feb 2008, late at night.
Tagged with accessibility, adverts, audio description, blindness, campaign, disability, rnib.
Here's a rather brilliant advert produced by members of PepsiCo's enABLE programme. Apparently some people found it offensive, but I really can't understand why.
This month, RNIB launched a campaign to raise awareness of TV audio description services - you may have seen the adverts running on various channels. My personal favourite is the BBC's, created some time ago by Red Bee. Showing nothing more than a man's face illuminated by the flickering light of a television screen, the viewer is forced to rely on sound alone to create the missing imagery in their own mind. It's a great demonstration of the power audio description has to reveal what would otherwise be hidden. Sky and Channel 4's efforts are both similarly well done.
All these adverts tell the story from the perspective of the disabled person and I think that's what makes them successful. They've also got something of a cult/viral quality to them - they get people thinking, laughing, questioning, talking. Do adverts like this raise awareness? I believe they do, and surely that can only be a good thing.
