What is Social Media Accessibility?
Most of us are victims of the social media trends and guilty of using it very frequently throughout the day, even during those Zoom meetings that should have been a mail (especially during those!!) unfortunately, this accessibility to social media is not universal, and many people with disabilities have a difficulty in social media accessibility.
Social media accessibility is the ease of access to social media for everyone from all backgrounds and abilities. It means designing and curating social media posts and videos in such a way that they provide a seamless and inclusive experience for everyone, no matter their cognitive and physical abilities. Accessible social media design should be an everyday practice, not an occasional promotion strategy.
Why Does Social Media Accessibility Matter to You?
- To Abide by the Disability Laws: Many countries like the USA and UK have laws that make it mandatory to make accessible websites and online content.
For a broader understanding, explore our blog on International Web Accessibility Standards.
- To Connect With the Segment of Your Audience that Includes People with Disabilities: If you do not create accessible social media content, you are losing out on a large potential audience that cannot access your content. Making social media accessible to everyone is necessary to connect more with people with disabilities and make them a part of your audience. Utilizing tools like social media scraping can help analyze patterns of engagement and identify gaps in accessibility, ensuring that your content reaches this audience more effectively.
- To Serve the Portion of Your Audience Without a Disability: Social media accessibility is also usable for people without disabilities. Most people watch videos on mute or just read the subtext. Thus, having accessible social media content serves a larger purpose.
- To Include Other Language Speakers: Including alt text or descriptions in your videos and images helps people who do not know English understand them. It will also improve your SEO ranking, as search engines read the text but not the images.
- To Improve Your Social Media Engagement: When you create content that more people can access, enjoy, and understand, you broaden your audience’s scope. This increases your social media engagement and conversion.
How to Create Accessible Social Media Content?
1. Add Alt Text to All Posts Containing an Image
Alternative or alt text describes any image. It is usually hidden and describes an image when people use a screen reader or any other assistive technology. Alt text should be used when posting on all social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Ensure you describe the image aptly, focusing on important and informational elements. Also, keep the text concise.
Discover detailed insights in our blog on Alt Text for Images
2. Be Sure to Include Image Descriptions Where applicable
Image descriptions (ID) are more detailed than alt texts. They describe in detail the salient features and identities of individuals, such as gender, race, height, etc. ID also gives information on color patterns and background details. Remember, ID is used along with alt text and is not a substitute for it.
3. Make Your Texts Accessible
- Avoid all Caps: If words are written in all caps, it is difficult to identify the words by their shape. Another issue is that a screen reader might interpret it as an acronym, not a full word.
- Choose Proper Font Colors: Ensure all your landing pages, hyperlinks, etc, have accessible font colors.
- Opt for Short Sentences: Write in as clear and to-the-point sentences as possible to make it easier for everyone to read and understand.
- Avoid Creative Typography: Too much window dressing and using fancy fonts will make it difficult for a screen reader to interpret the words.
- Limit Use of Emojis: Since all emojis have an alt text description assigned to them, it becomes difficult for people to use a screen reader or assistive technology.
- Use CamelCase for Hashtags: Using “CamelCase” means capitalizing the first letter of each word in a hashtag. This makes social media more accessible for users who use screen readers.
4. Use Inclusive Language
5. Describe Link Destinations
6. Make Videos Accessible
7. Limit the Use of Emojis
How Continual Engine Help?
One of Continual Engine’s products is Invicta™. For making social media accessible, Invicta can be quite useful with its advanced generative AI solution for image alt text. Invicta prides itself on being a hyper specialist with a singular focus on providing meaningful alt text, enabling your business to become more inclusive and accessible and enjoy a competitive advantage.
