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Your Social Media Accessibility Checklist for 2024

All you need to know about social media accessibility and key tips on how to incorporate accessibility best practices into your strategy.

Posted 10 days ago

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Guest Post

Posted 10 days ago

We all love scrolling through social media.

But have you ever thought that it is not easy for everyone, especially for people with disabilities like visual and hearing impairments, and others? Those who use assistive technologies to access social media content meet numerous challenges daily that significantly impact the quality of their lives.

The good news is that you can easily make your social media platforms accessible and inclusive for everyone.

This can increase your social media engagement and make the lives of millions of people worldwide easier. Ready to get started? Here is your social media accessibility checklist to make sure your social media is accessible to all in 2024.

What is Social Media Accessibility?

Social media accessibility refers to creating social media content that is easy to read and understand for everyone. Accessible social media content is simple to browse for screen readers and other assistive technology used by people with any kind of disability.

Most developed countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and others have passed laws that mandate social media platforms and websites to create content with accessibility in mind.

More than half of the world’s population has social media accounts totaling more than 5 billion social media accounts worldwide.

If you aim for long-term growth for your business, you should consider accessibility while creating your social media marketing strategy.

You may also want to perform an accessibility audit for your website. It will help you identify the existing issues of your platform and find solutions to improve overall accessibility.

How to Create Accessible Social Media Posts

Here is the social media accessibility checklist every business should have on hand.

Provide Your Contact Information On Your Social Media Account

Add your primary contact information on your social media account. It should include your phone number, email address, and a link to your company website where the audience can get more information about your business.

Write Accessible Text

Your audience grasps the information on your social media account mainly through the text you post. To make your text accessible you should:

Use Plain Language

Use plain language to enhance the likelihood that everyone will understand your posts. Avoid using technical jargon. Write in an active voice using concise sentences and paragraphs that make sense. Don’t be wordy. Use Grammarly and Hemingway Editor while editing your text.

Provide Color Contrast

The issue of color contrast is often overlooked. When creating social media posts be careful with it. According to the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, normal text should have a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1. For large text, it should be at least 3:1.

Be Cautious With Abbreviations

If you need to use abbreviations and acronyms in your text, spell out the expanded form at least once. As most screen readers read letters independently, there may be confusion with abbreviations.

Use Inclusive Language

Inclusive language refers to using terminology that is clear for everyone including people with disabilities.

Avoid using jargon and technical terminology that may not be familiar to everyone. If using terminology is necessary, make sure to explain it in a way that will be clear to everyone.

Choose Accessible Fonts

Choose as few fonts as possible. Use the most common ones such as Times New Roman, Arial, Tahoma, and Caliblri. When possible use larger fonts for better visibility.

Avoid Alternating Caps or All Caps

Alternating caps (for example, alterNATiNg) and All caps (For example, ALL CAPS) make the text harder to read and understand, especially for screen readers and other assistive technology. Avoid using them in your social media post or limit their usage.

Use Pascal Case Hashtags

Pascal Case hashtags are ideal for social media accessibility (for example, #SocialMediaAccessibility). Capitalizing the first letter of every word helps screen readers to read each word separately. Consider adding your hashtags at the end of the post so as not to interrupt the message.

Hashtags & Analytics

Find, manage, and analyze hashtags for Instagram.

Limit The Number of Emojis

Emojis are a fun way of sending your message to the audience. Yet, a large number of emojis can be irritating and may confuse. Keep in mind to use a few emojis.

Provide Alt Text For Images and GIFs

Alternative text (Alt text) is a textual description of a GIF or an image. It is important for people with disabilities who are not able to see the content. Screen readers can read the alternative text and help people with disabilities understand what images or gifs you have posted.

What if you don’t use alternative text for your social media posts?

The screen readers will read out the file name of the image or nothing. Either artificial intelligence (AI) will generate the alternative text instead of you. Note that AI-generated text is not always correct. So, it is always better to write the alt text yourself.

How to Create Good Alt Text

The main goal of an alt text is to provide your audience with the most important information about your content. Make sure to provide concise descriptions of your images and gifs.

Here are some useful tips on how to create good alt text:

Use active voice and present tense.
Create personalized content. Before crafting the text, consider your target audience.
Provide descriptions of the physical characteristics of people in the image or gif.
Avoid adding marketing keywords to your alt text.
Provide objective descriptions.
No need to start your alt text with phrases like “This is a gif/image”. Screen readers detect images and gifs and announce them to the reader.

How to Add Alt Text to Popular Social Media Platforms

All popular social media platforms allow adding alt text to all the images.

Here is how you can do that:

Facebook

Facebook offers AI-generated alt text for all the posts. To add yours, you need to edit the generated text. Here is how:

At the top of your account feed, click Photo/Video.
Choose the photo you wish to upload.
After hovering over the photo, click Edit.
You will see an automatically generated alt text. To edit it select Override generated alt text.
Craft your text. Note that Facebook has a 100-character limit for alt text.
Click Save.

X (Twitter)

You can add alt text to your images in X (formerly Twitter) in 3 simple steps.

Upload the image to your post and click Add Description below the image.
Add your text. X allows adding up to 1000 characters.
Click Save.

Instagram

Instagram also adds alt text automatically using object recognition technology. To add your own follow the steps below:

Upload your desired photo
Edit the photo and click Next.
Select Accessibility.
Craft the alt text in the box. Keep the 100-character limit of Instagram.
Click Share to save the changes and post.

LinkedIn provides a fast and easy way to add alt text to your post images. Here is how:

Upload the photo.
Below the image click Alt.text.
Add your alt text. Don’t exceed 120 characters.
Click Save.

Add Captions To Videos

Captions are the written representation of spoken words. They are important for people with hearing impairments as they help them grasp the information from the video content. In other words, captions make the video content accessible to everyone.

If you want your social media account to be accessible to people with hearing issues, provide captions and descriptions for each video you post.

How To Add Captions To Popular Social Media Platforms

Most popular social media platforms provide automatic captions for videos. You can either enable them or add captions of your own. The fastest and easiest way is to turn on auto-generated captions. Note that they are not written by humans so the accuracy is not guaranteed.

Make sure to check and make edits if you choose to enable auto-captioning.

Here is how to add captions to your videos on the most popular social media platforms.