What are tips for creating accessible social media posts?
People of all ages, interests, and abilities use聽Facebook, Twitter,听Instagram, and other social media platforms to share content and engage in conversations. Millions of social media participants have disabilities, including聽those that impact their ability to see, hear, and access a standard keyboard and mouse. Many use assistive technologies聽such as screen readers to read aloud content on the screen and alternate keyboards that emulate the computer keyboard but not the mouse.
Today, most popular social media platforms include聽some聽accessibility features and聽regularly聽roll out accessibility improvements.聽Current instructions for using accessibility features of a specific social media platform may be found on the platform website; if it can鈥檛 be found there, it is unlikely the tool developers have paid much attention to accessibility issues.
To ensure the accessibility聽of posts on social media, the authors of posts must聽use聽relevant accessibility features聽and employ other inclusive strategies that include the following.
- Compose聽hashtags using upper and lower case聽letters鈥攅.g., #BestTripEver聽rather than聽#besttripever. Individuals who have disabilities related聽to reading or sight are聽among the many beneficiaries of this practice.
- Show respect to members of all groups of people.聽Avoid, for example, negative聽phrases that relate to disabilities, like 鈥淗e鈥檚 crazy鈥 or 鈥淲hat an insane thing聽to say.鈥
- Address a wide range of language skills as you write content (e.g., use plain English, spell聽out acronyms, define terms, avoid or define jargon).
- 鲍蝉别听emojis聽sparingly. Although a screen reader may be able to read聽aloud聽descriptions聽of聽emojis鈥攅.g.,听鈥淪miling face with sunglasses,鈥濃攊t is time consuming to read aloud聽all the descriptions for a聽long聽list of聽emojis.
- Use descriptive wording for hyperlink text (e.g., 鈥淒O-IT website鈥 rather than 鈥渃lick here鈥).
- Provide concise text descriptions of content presented within images.
- Caption videos and, ideally, include audio descriptions. Often, you can find instructions for editing computer-generated captions on the website for the platform, such as YouTube,听Vimeo, and Facebook.