Stakeholders

Gaining stakeholder buy-in is essential to the success of government communications

To involve stakeholders constructively, be clear who they are and what their interest is in your project, programme or initiative.

Disabled people or particular groups of disabled people may make up a large proportion of your target audience. Disability organisations may have an interest in your project and could give you insight into the disabled segment of your audience. Such organisations may also be a significant channel for communicating with disabled people.

Segmentation

Target audiences for government campaigns are often diverse and it is difficult to capture everybody's needs with one message. Segmenting your audience creates smaller groups that you can target separately. This reduces the risk of alienating parts of your audience and enables you to use your resources efficiently.

Segmentation allows you to set different objectives for different groups depending on their experiences and expectations. For example, encouraging people into work should take account of the different barriers and attitudes faced by particular groups of people - such as transport, lack of skills or low self-esteem.

It can also help you identify parts of the population that have historically been hard to reach. For example, take-up of cervical screening services is lower among women with learning disabilities.

Research

Effective communications means considering what is known about particular groups and bringing the information together to set priorities.

Primary audience research generates highly specific data about particular audience segments. Remember to consider in any quantitative work you do that around one in five people has an impairment or long-term health condition.

Regular desk research about particular audience segments can also be helpful. This involves gathering and analysing secondary data found within your own department or published elsewhere.

Existing sources should be utilised as much as possible, since wide range of information about disabled people in the UK is already available. Find out how to access statistical and survey data commissioned by government departments and bodies. Talk to third sector organisations who will have information about particular groups of disabled people.

Using research to help meet government objectives

Governmental ‘five a day' campaigns on fruit and vegetables should target those on lower incomes and with less access to diet information. Research shows disabled people tend to be poorer and have reduced access to information. A higher than average number of the target audience for a ‘five a day’ campaign would be disabled people.

Knowing this, government communicators can plan their communications to be available through many different media and in various alternative formats

Case study: Reaching disabled people in ethnic minority communities

More than 300 languages are spoken within the UK and ethnic minority communities account for more than eight per cent of the population (source: 2001 Census).

Some ethnic minority communities include a higher than average number of people with impairments and long-term health conditions, for example due to poverty or problems experienced by asylum seekers in their country of birth.

Employment rates are known to be low for disabled people and for the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities. The group in the UK with the lowest employment rates of all are disabled Pakistani and Bangladeshi women (source: ‘Multiple disadvantage in employment’, Joseph Rowntree Foundation 2003).

For a campaign about education and training, employment opportunities or out of work benefits it would be important to find channels and craft messages that work for disabled people, in particular disabled Pakistani and Bangladeshi women.

Channels to consider using would include digital TV and posters (for example in doctors’ surgeries and at bus stops). Formats to consider would include Easy Read and audio translation. All materials should be written in Clear English to ensure they can be understood by people with a low reading age or who have English as a second language.

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Page last reviewed: 04 November 2010