COM 1112 Blog Post 5

Commercials and Accessibility

 

Introduction

For my analysis of commercials and accessibility, I chose the advertisement that Fox Sports ran for this year's Daytona 500, with their 'Daytona Day' theme. 

Visual Impaired Enhancements 

Racing is the first and foremost focus of this commercial, as it should be. For those who have never been to a race, the sounds of the field of cars roaring by at 200 miles per hour is a major highlight of a race experience. This commercial utilizes plenty of audio from race cars, in addition to sounds of crowds cheering and ambient audio. Background music is also present in this commercial, which sets the tone of a NASCAR race.

Hearing Impaired Enhancements

For hearing-impaired viewers, this commercial for Daytona Day does have some shortcomings, but I do believe it could be rectified in a few areas. First off, in the house party scene, I believe that there are many visual cues for a NASCAR house party. Someone is grilling out of a car, there are plenty of driver t shirts, the narrator enters the scene in a muscle car, and kids are playing around in NASCAR-themed kiddie jeeps. Lastly, in the shots where the racecars are zooming by, I would add little text blurbs with sound-effect-subtitles-something like 'zoom!' or 'crash!' like one would find in a comic book. I would also use some captioning, such as when the narrator says "It's the day we go fast again!"

Conclusion

In conclusion, this Daytona Day commercial that Fox Sports produced for the 2018 Daytona 500 has many auditory and visual cues to help impaired viewers better understand the message. While it does have some lacking areas of enhancements, I believe they did a good job at presenting their message in a way that could be interpreted by all viewers.