A Sigh Of Relief

Client: Currys

Currys exists to make tech accessible, so its advertising had to be accessible too. Yet with two million people living with sight loss and 12 million experiencing hearing loss, most UK ads still exclude them: 75% run without subtitles and 90% without audio description. Channel 4’s 2024 Diversity in Advertising Award challenged brands to change this, and Sigh of Relief gave Currys the platform to lead.

Inclusive creative alone wasn’t enough. In a fragmented media ecosystem, accessibility varies across VOD, cinema and digital, meaning for many people with hearing loss, ads don’t land — they don’t even exist. So we set a simple, uncompromising rule: every placement, on every platform, had to deliver a fully accessible asset, with no exceptions. We worked directly with media owners to audit real audience experience and engineered fixes where systems failed. Where VOD metadata couldn’t reliably trigger captions, and cinema tech couldn’t support optional subtitles, we mandated burnt‑in captions to guarantee access. This wasn’t a workaround but a line in the sand. The approach helped accelerate Channel 4’s Spring 2026 embedded‑caption mandate and delivered Currys’ strongest MMM ROI to date (23:1), backed by standout System1 performance. Accessible media didn’t dilute effectiveness, it amplified it.