What if 12 of Nashville’s most iconic songwriters, including Dolly Parton, wrote the alt text for a state tourism website?
That’s exactly what happened when the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development (TDTD) hired VML to reimagine their site’s accessibility. Dr. Josh Loebner, VML’s former Head of Inclusive Design, replaced simple compliance with creativity, driving a 36% increase in web traffic for TDTD.
In this episode of What Comes Next, Josh tells the story of the award-winning Tennessee Sound Sites campaign, which recruited world-renowned songwriters Dolly Parton, Kix Brooks, and more to write poetic, lyrical alt text for Tennessee imagery to welcome blind and low-vision travelers to the state.
In this episode:
00:00 Intro
02:12 Meet Dr. Josh Loebner, former Head of Inclusive Design at VML
04:13 Why tourism imagery excludes a large market segment
05:32 The idea for poetic alt text for Tennessee
08:47 The choice to bring in songwriters vs. AI
09:55 What makes good vs bad alt text
18:39 Co-creation with the blind community
28:08 How VML measured the success of the campaign
35:00 Advice for brands & agencies to recreate VML’s success
37:48 What comes next
A NOTE FROM THIS RECORDING: As mentioned in the opening, this conversation was recorded on August 24th and is dedicated to Dolly Parton’s memory. We left the conversation as it happened.
The What Comes Next podcast is sponsored by Making Space and Level Access, powered by AW360, Advertising Week’s year-round content platform.
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The Sound Sites Campaign: https://www.vml.com/work/sound-sites?theme=9
Learn more about Level Access: levelaccess.com
Learn more about Making Space: making-space.com
Follow Josh Loebner: @Josh Loebner on LinkedIn
Follow Level Access: @LevelAccessA11y on YouTube
Follow Making Space: @_making_space__ on Instagram
Follow Advertising Week: @advertisingweek on Instagram
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