Budgets and planning

Planning disability inclusion into your campaign at the start can save time and money

Planning the mix of communications channels you will use for a campaign early on will help you:

reach the maximum amount of your audience
be cost-effective.

Make reaching disabled people a core part of what you do as a government communicator - not an add-on or afterthought.

Budgeting

You will need to budget for your communications projects accurately. Be aware of costs for alternative formats, for example the cost of producing publications in larger font sizes. Think about the best ways of reaching your audiences as well – utilising a range of channels such as online and radio might be better than large stocks of print publications.

Other alternative formats that may have cost implications include Easy read, audiotape, subtitled or sign-language embedded DVDs and audio description.

Plan these costs for producing alternative formats into your campaign budget, or into your overall communications budget for the financial year. Planning alternative formats in advance, as well as being economical, can save on time at a later stage.

Integrated communications

This means combining different media to communicate your message instead of focusing on one channel. It is also known as media-neutral planning or channel-neutral planning.

Advertising through a range of channels will help you:

reach a higher proportion of your target audience
avoid spending on media advertising that parts or all of your audience will miss.

For example supplementing a direct mail campaign with a radio advert will increase your chance of reaching people who have a visual impairment.

Remember that providing information accessibly is not a case one size fits all, even for the same impairment. You need to consider:

age
preferences
campaign purpose

Communicating with your audience using their preferred method will also help you build stronger relationships with them. For example:

Media	May not reach	Alternative
Radio	People with hearing impairments	Internet, print
Print	People with visual impairments	Radio, audio-CD
Internet and SMS	Older people	Digital TV, Print, TV,
Direct mail	Younger people	SMS, email

Communications planning policy

Inconsistent or poor communication with any group of citizens could damage the reputation of your department or of government as a whole. A department-wide policy on planning communications campaigns and products is helpful.

Your policy could include timings for:

consulting relevant disability organisations
including disabled people in research, consultation and development.

Where practical, all communications activity should be monitored against a representative sample of the target audience, which should include disabled people.

Engage principles

The Engage framework takes well tried principles of strategic communication and adapts them for Government, using techniques such as segmentation, targeting and insight to develop communications that shift attitudes and change behaviours.

There are eight key principles to Engage:

Listening, consulting, understanding, questioning to obtain insight into people's motivations, needs and barriers.
Segmentation makes our communication more effective. Identifying people with distinctive shared needs, characteristics and beliefs gives a sharper focus to policy and communication.
Changing behaviour is often essential to policy delivery. We need to work with colleagues to help identify the interventions that will encourage change and develop communication that will support them, and really engage our audiences.
Propositions express policy in a way that makes sense to people we are targeting and gives them a clear understanding of what's in it for them or for society as a whole.
Reaching people in complex communication environments means that we must consider a wide range of media, channel and stakeholder options.
The best communications product is created when the views of the public are fed into all aspects of policy development and service delivery.
We need to collaborate with policy and service delivery partners and stakeholders if we are to improve communication and encourage effective engagement with our audiences.
Being open and accountable in all our communication and marketing activities, adhering to our civil service values of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality.

What you can do

Choose a mix of communication channels reach your maximum audience.
Make sure you will be able to supply accessible formats.
Read the Engage framework web pages
Know your department’s communication planning policy or request one is developed.

Ask: What combinations of communication channels can help you reach large numbers of people and as many of your disabled audience as possible?