Social media is everywhere and used by a lot of people. We need to ensure that it’s available to everyone to be as inclusive as possible. Here are a few tips on how to increase your social media accessibility.
General Social Media Accessibility Tip
Hashtags
Words or phrases that many social media platforms use to search and group topics together all starting with the hash symbol ‘#’.
Capitalise the first letter of each word if your hashtag to make it easier to read, also know as CamelCase.
#LearningIsForEveryone
Ensure all Pictures have Alt Text
There’s a wide range of people who use screen readers to help them access your content. When it gets to an image, make sure that there is something to read out that explains the image.
Use the Alt-Text or sometimes known as a description.
Tips for writing descriptive alt-text:
Convey the content: There’s a huge gap between “Image of a chart,” and something like, “A bar chart illustrates that there has been a year-over-year increase in forest fires, peaking at 100 this year.”
Skip saying “image of” or “photograph of.” The Royal National Institute of Blind People says most screen readers prefer you don’t.
Mention colour if it is important to understanding the image.
Share humour. Descriptive text doesn’t have to be overly formal and should do its best to express what’s funny.
Transcribe text. If the image has copy that is central to its meaning, make sure you include it in the description.
Learn from the best: WebAIM offers tips and several examples, and copywriter Ashley Bischoff’s presentation is very helpful.
Don’t forget GIFs. Twitter recently made alt-text an option for GIFs. If the platform does not support alt-text, include a description in the action.
Inclusive Design for Social Media – HootSuite Blog
Limit emoji and emoticon use
Emojis and emoticons get read aloud by assistive technology. That means people will hear things like “loudly crying face” or “face with closed eyes and stuck out tongue.”
Link shorteners
Link shortening services not only save you characters in your posts, but they help limit the raw characters a screen-reader has to read aloud.
I use Bit.ly for all my tweets.
Make link text descriptive
When you add a link, you may want something different to appear on the screen, instead of the actual link. While this is fine, please don’t use ‘Click Here’.
Let people know what will happen when they click – does it go to another page, another site, download something?
It needs to be clear how this link is different from the others, as some assistive tools can read out just the link text.
Best practice for all links, not only for accessibility.
Tweets
Twitter and Tweetdeck make it easy to add descriptions for the alternative text – Alt-Text.
Take a look at my Accessibility page to see how I’ve implemented some these tips into this site. Follow me on social media to see them in action.
Latest Posts
- The Quickest Way to Navigate Microsoft Teams
If you spend a lot of time in Microsoft Teams, you’ll know the struggle — endless scrolling through chats and channels trying to find the one you need. The Microsoft Teams GoTo command is here to fix that. It’s a simple keyboard shortcut that takes you straight where you need to go, no scrolling required.… Read more: The Quickest Way to Navigate Microsoft Teams - Can’t Find Your Unread Teams Messages? Try This First
Have you ever noticed a notification in Microsoft Teams telling you there’s an unread message, but no matter where you look, you just can’t track it down? You’re not alone — it’s one of those small but genuinely frustrating things that can eat up your time. The good news is there’s a really simple way… Read more: Can’t Find Your Unread Teams Messages? Try This First - Pin Messages in Microsoft Teams – and Actually Find Them Again
If you’ve ever shared something important in a Teams channel and watched it disappear into the scroll, you’re not alone. The good news is that you can pin messages in Microsoft Teams so they’re easy to track down later. The slightly less good news? Microsoft moved where your pinned messages live, and it’s not where… Read more: Pin Messages in Microsoft Teams – and Actually Find Them Again - Never Lose a Teams Chat Again With This Simple Trick
Have you ever lost track of a chat in Microsoft Teams and ended up scrolling through your entire sidebar trying to find it? It’s one of those small frustrations that happens more often than it should. The good news is the Microsoft Teams filter text box is already built into Teams and means you should… Read more: Never Lose a Teams Chat Again With This Simple Trick - The Truth About Microsoft Copilot Security for Business Owners
If you’ve been wondering about Microsoft Copilot data privacy — whether it’s snooping through your files or feeding your business information into some public AI model — you’re not alone. It’s the question I get asked more than any other. So let me give you the straight answers, without the tech jargon. First, What Can… Read more: The Truth About Microsoft Copilot Security for Business Owners