Alternative text is an important tool for making the social media space usable and accessible for everyone. Alternative text is used to make images easier to read for users through an image reader using HTML code. Enabling this can look different on any social media platform, but in most cases, it is expected that social media poster/content creator writes their own alternative text.
Here is how to add alternative text for Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
After you choose your image for your post and possibly add your description, scroll to the small text that says "Advanced Settings" at the bottom of the "New Post" page. After you select that, choose "Write Alt Text." From there you can write the alternative text for your image. This does not work with videos or gifs, so if needed I would recommend writing the alt-text in the caption starting off with "image description:" which is something common I see in social media posts. You can always go back and edit or add alt text after the post is made by selecting the three dots in the corner of a post and choosing "Edit Alt Text" in the bottom right corner of your image.
For Twitter, adding alt text works a little differently for mobile devices vs. the computer. For computers, when you make a new post and add an image, there is a small text below the photo that says, "Add description." After you choose that, you can enter the alt-text that is needed. For mobile devices, It works the same way, but instead of "Add description" being below the image, there is "+ALT" button in the bottom right corner of the images next to a paintbrush button that allows you to edit your image. I do not believe there is a way to edit a Twitter post at all, even to add alt text, so it might just be best to delete it and start over.
When you place your image into your Facebook post, choose the "Edit" button in the upper left corner of the image. Once chosen, choose the "Alternative Text Button" to the left of the image. From there, there are two options:
Facebook can automatically generate an alternative text for you. The automatic alternative text always starts off with "Maybe."
You can create a custom alternative text.
Just like Instagram, you can go back and add alt-text to your post by selecting the three dots in the corner of a post, and following the same steps as above. Another great thing, is that you can link Facebook and Instagram posts, so the alt text from Instagram can transfer over to Facebook if the profiles are linked!
The process for adding alternative text works differently for different online platforms, but they all work the same. The hard part is just finding where the option to add it is. The biggest thing I can recommend is to type your alt-text before hand in Word and/or email it to yourself. That way, you can just copy and paste what you have across multiple platforms. This may get a little tiring after a while, but it is a small step to make the social media space more accessible to all users.
This video goes into depth about how alternative text works in websites and looks at bad examples of alternative text
This is a free extension for chrome users to use a screen reader that reads text and images