Accessibility is often limited in many ways on social media platforms. Anyone using assistive technology often has difficulty navigating social media for the following reasons: no keyboard shortcuts, no headers, no alt-text for images, no closed captions for video, poor color contrast.
General Guidelines
- Make your social media content available in alternative sources like your website.
- Provide links or contact information for further information and assistance with accessing information.
- Video should include captions, transcripts and necessary audio descriptions. You can host your video on Youtube or Vimeo and use an accessible player like the one found from AccessibilityOz.
- Video players should Allow the viewer to pause, rewind, change volume, turn on captions and audio descriptions with the mouse or the keyboard only.
- Videos should not start automatically.
- Provide alternative text for photos, pictures and graphics.
- Provide easy entry points to access your website.
- Avoid acronyms.
- Learn more: How To Be More Accessible on Social Media (by Siteimprove)
Twitter
- If you include a hyperlink indicate where the link leads, audio, picture or video. Use these prefixes before tweets [PIC], [VIDEO] and [AUDIO].
- Place any hashtags at the end of your tweets so a screen reader can voice the main content.
- In the settings, turn on alternative text for images Setting>Display and sound>Accessibility>turn on Compose image descriptions.
- In the "Bio" section of your profile include other ways to contact your organization.
- Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag.
- Avoid acronyms.
- Consider having tweets compiled and send in an email which is often more accessible.
Facebook
- Add a caption file to a video. After uploading a video you can click "edit" and add a SRT file. You may want to add captions in YouTube first.
- Facebook has an accessibility page discussing the accessibility features.
- List your website address in the "About" section of your page. Include other ways to contact you such as an email address and/or a telephone number.
- When posting a photo album, add captions to each photo by using the edit input field associated with each photo.
- Include descriptive text when you post a photo. Facebook adds automated alt text but this is not as useful as human described alt-text.
- Avoid acronyms.
Instagram
- Provide a detailed caption and/or add alt text after an image is posted via the menu's edit option.
- Instagram does not allow users to add closed captions to video so you will want to provide a detailed description of what a video depicts.
Snapchat
- Use larger text options for the captions.
- Make sure the captions provide enough color contrast with the background.