It’s important to ensure your social media posts and website content is accessible to all audiences. Not only does it mean you can reach more people, but it can also improve your SEO ranking and the perception of your organisation. So what are the key accessibility issues to watch out for?
Alt-Text
Alternative text (or alt-text) should be provided with images. This can be interpreted by a screen reader for blind or partially sighted audiences. Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook all allow for alt-text on images – and including it can improve your SEO ranking. Here are some best practices for alt-text:
- Keep it short and descriptive
- Include any text on the image
- Don’t keyword stuff
- Don’t start with “image of” or “photo of”
Captions
Adding captions to your audio posts makes them accessible to Deaf and Hard of Hearing people. And it means people scrolling without sound can also enjoy. There are many easy ways to add captions. You can generate automatic captioning on Instagram and TikTok, in editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro and CapCut, or by using transcription services.
Make sure your captions are correct!
It is important to review automatic captions as they can get things wrong. Also don’t include any jokes in the captions. They should be a simple transcription of the audio – nothing more. It can be helpful to use different colours to indicate different speakers.
Colours
When creating graphics, the colours you use are very important. They can say a lot about your brand. But they also can create access issues. You can use a contrast checker like this one to make sure any text is easy to read and check images in this colour blind checker. You may also want to consider autistic audiences who can be sensitive to lots of bright colours.
Emojis
Most of us love a good emoji – but most of us don’t use screen readers. Whilst emojis can add a pop of colour to a Tweet or indicate tone, they can be a nightmare for people who use screen readers. Blind and artially sighted people may use a screen reader which, as the name suggests, reads out what is on the screen. Lots of emojis can take a long time to read through and be hard to comprehend. It can sound something like this:
Not the nicest. The same goes for other forms of fancy text and symbols.
Content Warnings
When covering sensitive issues or using graphic imagery many readers may benefit from content warnings. This empowers audiences to make decisions about what they do and do not want to see. It also allows people to avoid possible triggers such as those with photosensitive epilepsy. Good content warnings should state in simple terms the sensitive content about to be discussed. They should not be censored or written in code.
Social Media Guides
To learn more about accessibility on different platforms you can check out their guides: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok.