Social Media
Social Media
Currently under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), you are not required to ensure that your social media posts are accessible, but this is also technically a grey area since we are an institution that receives federal funding (which says we have to be accessible). The current guidelines simply do not account for social media. However, just because it is not required does not mean that it’s not a good idea to make them accessible for a couple of reasons.
Accessible postings communicate indirectly that you (and indirectly your institution) care about accessibility. Students who need accommodations are paying attention to if an institution is distributing accessible materials. Think about it: if you know you need closed captions, but everything the school produces does not have captions or only has machine-generated captions, you’re going to think twice before applying there.
Accessible postings are diverse. If you are not including those with disabilities in your content, then you are not being diverse.
The web guidelines are always changing. WCAG 2.1 was released in June of 2018, and the original release date for 2.2 was November of 2020 (delayed to 2022 due to covid). Just because the current guidelines do not require accessible social media postings does not mean later guidelines will not.
In case you were thinking that maybe the government will not be requiring accessible social media eventually, the Federal Government has created a Social Media toolkit.
Inclusive design tries to make the experience positive for as many people as possible in a situation. Up until recently, social media did not address those with disabilities at all. A 2018 Facebook study found, “30% of people reported difficulty in at least one of these areas: seeing, hearing, speaking, organizing thoughts, walking, or grasping their hands.”
Microsoft has three keys to inclusive design that you should keep in mind when you’re building any material (but particularly social media):
Recognize exclusion
Solve for one, extend to many
Learn from diversity
When you build content that is inaccessible, your excluded audience normally doesn’t complain; 71% of them leave (Excluded Web Visitors Often Don’t Complain, They Just Leave Media Access Australia).
An easy way to be inclusive is to make sure you include closed captions. A Facebook study found that content designed for sound off was rated as having 48% more relevance, and 38% more brand interest. If you think your “average user” doesn’t notice, you’re incorrect. We often say to be an accessibility ally includes just generating accessible content. A 2021 study by Google found that 64% of people surveyed took an action after watching an ad that they considered to be inclusive, so your actions and choices positively (or negatively) impact others.
Odds are you proofread your post one last time before pressing send, publish, or submit. But language goes beyond that. You want to think about how assistive tools like screen readers will read what you’ve published. While social media for your purposes is part of your job, you have to remember that your target audience is using it for pleasure. There’s an odd dichotomy between the two.
Plain Language: You want to avoid jargon and be careful with using slang. There’s a fine line that has to be walked in social media postings. Certainly, you want to use the language your audience is using but often your audience is extremely diverse. You should be aiming for no more than an 8th grade reading level in all social media posts.
Click here: You want to use descriptive links whenever you can. Screen readers read the lengthy URL. If the platform you’re using doesn’t allow for descriptive links, you should use a link shortener. Think of it this way: you don’t want to read the whole URL and neither does someone using assistive technology.
Emojis and emoticons: Emojis and emoticons are read aloud by assistive technology. Have you seen posts that are filled with clapping hands? The screen reader is going to read every emoji.
Inclusive language: You want to avoid ableist language and stick with gender-neutral pronouns. Ensure that your posts are diverse.
Camel case is when you capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag. The reason you want to use camel case is because it indicates to the screen reader which word is which. Without the camel case, you are allowing the screen reader to guess which word is which and where a word stops and the next word ends.
A Guide to Basic Accessibility on Social Media (Access Living)
CamelCase (TechTerms)
Camel Case (Wikipedia)
Creating Accessible Social Media Content (UA Technology Accessibility YouTube)
Federal Social Media Accessibility Toolkit Hackpad (Digital.gov)
Inclusive Design (Microsoft)
Inclusive Design for Social Media: Tips for Creating Accessible Channels (Katie Sehl Hootsuite)
List of Disability-Related Terms with Negative Connotations (Wikipedia)
Social Media (University of Minnesota)
Social Media Accessibility Guidelines (Princeton University)
Social Media User’s Guide (University of Rochester)
Why is Web Accessibility Important? (Northwestern University)
6 Ways to Make Your Social Media Posts More Accessible (Flagship Social)
7 Ways to Make Social Media Accessible (GovLoop)
8 Ways to Make Your Social Media Channels More Gender Inclusive (HootSuite)