Social media accessibility, like any other type of accessibility, benefits everyone. Platforms have come a long way in offering accessibility features. Learn more about specific platforms on their resource pages.
For the best user experience, posts should use the following structure:
Using language that is clear and easy to understand is essential to getting your message across to your whole audience. It should be concise, conversational, familiar and actionable.
Hashtags are for searchability, categorization and discovery. To boost engagement and keep your post clear and understandable, use them sparingly. Don't use the same hashtag more than once in your post, and keep the number of hashtags to two or three.
Use a link shortener for social media posts. Screen readers read every character of links so it's essential they are concise. Most social platforms don't allow descriptive link text.
It's not easy for screen readers to interpret emojis. Avoid using them in place of words or as bullet points. Use them in moderation at the end of your main content, if at all.
Use the default platform typefaces instead of using an external site or special setting to change the appearance of text in posts and profiles. Screen readers have difficulty interpreting them and may skip over that text completely.
Screen readers read left to right and don't interpret how text appears visually. Avoid using spaces and tabs to create the appearance of columns or lists.
Learn more about writing helpful alt text. Integrating alt text of an image into post content is important when adding alt text isn't possible. Automatically generated alt text is often inaccurate and doesn't take context into considerations.
Don't rely only on pictures of text. They are not compatible with screen readers and difficult for everyone to read. Add identical text in the post content, alt text or both. If you use text overlays or pictures of text, check the color contrast to make sure it passes guidelines.
Captions can be open (overlaid on video, can't be turned on/off) or closed (separate file from the video, can be turned on/off). Automatic captions tend to be inaccurate and don't include speaker identification or punctuation. Captions must be:
Make sure live videos are captioned.
These files enable closed captioning and include video text with timing for the words and the order in which they appear. It is a text file and doesn't include the video.
Verbal descriptions of visual elements in a video allow people who are blind or have low vision to experience videos more fully. When possible, offer a second version of videos with audio descriptions included.
Transcripts can be posted or linked to. They offer a better user experience.