Social Media Accessibility Tips
Billions of people use social media platforms all around the world. Organizations utilize social media to increase brand awareness and to connect with their target audiences. While social media can be an effective tool to reach some people within our population, the platforms’ current capabilities may limit accessibility by members of the disabled community. Improving the accessibility of organizational social media accounts should be a priority for mission-driven organizations. Organizations that work to ensure their social media accounts are accessible demonstrate their ethical commitment while expanding their reach - a win-win for organizations that invest in their communities.
How Social Media Accessibility Impacts Communities
As a disabled-owned organization, Becker Digital is acutely aware of the many barriers people with disabilities encounter in our world, both on and offline. Approximately 26 percent of our nation’s population lives with a disability; however, organizations often fail to acknowledge disability accessibility and inclusive communications strategies. While social media platforms offer many features, these popular apps fail to be accessible to our diverse disabled community.
Globally, over five percent of the population are visually or hearing impaired. This population is expected to continue to increase, as the population ages. People with disabilities may use technology such as closed caption and screen readers to consumer online content; however, these tools do not function properly all of the time. Additionally, social media apps are not fully accessible to all users. Thus, communications and marketing professionals must work to improve the accessibility of organizational social media accounts.
MIssion-driven Organization’s Social Media Accessibility
Mission-driven organizations that prioritize social media accessibility take steps to ensure their digital content is accessible by the disabled community. By becoming more accessible, organizations remove would-be communication barriers that exist when non-accessible marketing content and strategies are implemented. Organizations that do not demonstrate social media accessibility inadvertently communicate ableist, discriminatory values.
Social media users living with disabilities that are unable to access an organization’s online content due to lack of accessibility will patronize organizations that demonstrate more inclusive practices. Understanding the diverse populations that make up our communities is imperative for mission-driven organizations that seek sustainable growth and values-based operations. While different disabilities require different accessibility measures, there are some guidelines for organizations regarding social media accessibility.
Here are a few tips for improving your organization’s social media accessibility:
Use Alt-Text and Image Descriptions
Marketers that include alt-text and image descriptions within their organization’s social media content can help improve the accessibility for individuals with visual impairments. This addition helps screen reading technology to better communicate the content to the user. To write an effective alt-text or image description requires the marketer to describe what’s in the image - the colors, the context, the people, the environment, etc. Access Lab offers an excellent guide for marketing professionals new to writing alt-text and image descriptions. Some social media channels provide in-app tools to support alt-text and image descriptions.
Here’s how you can turn on the alt text or image description function on these common social media channels:
Organizations will often upload an image with text, such as a descriptive flyer or infographic, and neglect to provide an adequate alt-text or image description. These types of social media posts are inaccessible by many social media users with visual disabilities.
Write Social Media Captions in Plain Language
Written communications should all be in plain language style - a clear, conscious style of writing. plain language improves the accessibility of the content. Plain language is also referred to as “plain English” or “plain writing”. By writing in plain language, organizations can help increase social media content accessible to diverse audiences. Plain language should be considered when drafting social media copy and other communications materials.
Here are a few tips and resources for writing in plain language:
Write in an active voice with a clear subject.
Use familiar language. Consider including in-text definitions for less frequently used words and acronyms.
Avoid run-on sentences. Prioritize conciseness and content organization structure.
Put information in a logical order, with the important details first.
Review the Checklist for Plain Language from PlainLanguage.gov when writing social media posts.
Utilize Video Captions
Video captions are an essential part of social media accessibility, as captions allow people with hearing impairments to engage with recorded and streamed content online. There are different types of captioning available for various social media platforms. Facebook currently offers automatically generated captions and allows organizations to manually add captions to their video content. On other apps, third-party providers, like Clipomatic, can be helpful in adding captions to social media content. Marketers should evaluate caption generators to ensure the content displayed is accurate, even when using third-party software that specializes in caption generation.
All Hashtags Should be in CamelCase
Social media hashtags in all lowercase or all uppercase are frequently used online; however, this format is challenging to read, both for individuals and screen reading technology. Instead, organizations should utilize CamelCase format for hashtags included in social media content. CamelCase is a term used to describe capitalizing the first letter of each word in a hashtag.
Non-CamelCase example: #howtonotwritehashtags and #HOWTONOTWRITEHASHTAG
CamelCase example: #HowToWriteHashtags
When hashtags are written without CamelCase, the hashtagged word may be read by screen readers as one long word that makes little sense. By capitalizing the first letter of each word in the hashtag, screen reader technology will insert a space in between each capitalized portion, thus reading each work within the hashtag as a distinct word. While utilizing CamelCase format for hashtags is a slight change in an organization’s communications plan, this implementation can make a big difference to the overall user experience of people utilizing screenreader technology to engage with social media content.
Learn more about social media accessibility:
Disability is present in our communities, and organizations should be aware of how accessible their digital spaces, including social media, are to people living with disabilities. If your organization is looking for a creative partner to provide marketing and PR services, Becker Digital is always ready to help. Our team of experienced professionals is available for projects large and small. We work to customize our services to the client’s needs. Contact us to schedule a complimentary call and learn more about how digital strategy can enhance your organization’s mission.