As marketers, we pride ourselves on getting into people’s heads. But what about heads that aren’t wired quite the same way ours are?

A very dear friend of mine is on the autism spectrum. She is hilarious and smart, a rising star in her field, interested in everything, and always has time to listen and share. We can talk and text for hours, but if I include an emoji in a chat, things can screech to a halt until I clarify. She’s simply not great with nuance and inference—she needs people to say what they mean.

Think about who your marketing may be leaving out. One-fifth of your prospects aren’t outliers—they’re people you can’t afford to ignore.

Needless to say, that got me thinking about marketing. On the one hand, we’re taught to communicate clearly—never leaving the call to action implied. But we’re also expected to make things catchy and clever. And that’s where we can run into trouble, leaving vast swathes of our audiences—up to 20% of adults—out of the conversation.

I won’t pretend to be an expert on autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia or any of the other varied ways in which people learn and consume information. But I do know there are ways we can make our communications more approachable for a neurodiverse population.

• Don’t overcomplicate things. Clean up unnecessary clutter and distractions on your page, and be careful about choosing images that make people feel like they’re completing a puzzle. Keep your navigation consistent from page to page, too. Neurotypical or neurodiverse, no audience has ever wanted to work at understanding our messages.
• Make your point clearly. I love humor in marketing. I’ve written before about how business people like to laugh, and I’m not suggesting that neurodiverse people don’t have a sense of humor (Hannah Gadsby makes it clear that comedy and autism go very well together). But it’s important to pay off a clever line with straight-up information quickly. Bizarre metaphors, meandering paragraphs, passive voice, vague buttons—there’s no place for them in good copy anyway, but especially not if you want to be more inclusive.
• Recognize sensory differences and preferences. Some people have a hard time with on-screen movement or the way video flickers. Others have difficulty reading captions or struggle to process auditory content. Because there’s no one solution that works for everyone, provide options and user choice. And never, never, never autoplay. Extra bonus—adding text alongside your videos won’t just support neurodiverse users, it’ll capture people like me who simply prefer to read.
• Opt for a sans-serif font. The extra lines on a serif font such as Times New Roman can make text harder for people with dyslexia to read. Try using a simpler font, such as Verdana or Ariel instead, and make it larger (great for people with dyslexia and low vision). If you want to go further, consider the Dyslexie font, created to prevent letters from flipping and changing as people read.
• Use CamelCase for your hashtags. Named for its humps in the middle, CamelCase caps each letter in the hashtag—#MarketingForNeurodiversity rather than #marketingforneurodiversity—so screen readers and speech-to-text devices can parse individual words.

Most important, think about who your marketing may be leaving out. One-fifth of your prospects aren’t outliers—they’re people you can’t afford to ignore.

For help understanding and communicating with your audiences on their terms, reach out to FATFREE. It’s what we’re good at.