Create Accessible Social Media Content

Essential Steps to Know

1. Provide alt text and image descriptions for images and Gifs. Alt text goes into the alt text field when adding an image to a social media post. It is concise and delivers critical information about the visual to the blind, deafblind and low vision community that uses assistive technology (AT). The image description is added to the post itself and provides more details to anyone that needs a detailed description, including anyone in the low vision community that does not use AT and neurodivergent people that may need an image described to them. Read the Images and Visuals section of the Accessible Social site for tangible examples of good alt text and image descriptions. 
2. Provide captions, a transcript, and descriptions for videos. Captions, transcripts, and descriptions provide various disabilities communities with effective video communications. 
   • Captions can be used by the Deaf and Hard of Hearing communities. Captions should be human-transcribed to ensure accurate punctuation, timing, and spelling of content. If captioning internally, a good resource for formatting captions is the DCMP Captioning Key. It is best to use closed captions generated through a .vtt file to ensure people can customize the caption experience, but some social media platforms will only allow for open captions. Use closed captions in all cases where you can upload a .vtt file. 
   • A transcript is used by the deafblind community to access video content. It can also be used by the hard of hearing, neurodivergent, and vestibular disorder communities. A transcript is generated from the captions. A link to the transcript should be provided in a social media post that includes video.  
   • Descriptions of the visuals in a video provide equal access for the blind, low vision, and deafblind communities. There are two options for providing descriptions of visuals: an audio description or a written description. 
3. Use camel case or pascal case for hashtags. A hashtag in Camel Case #looksLikeThis, with the first word in all lowercase and then the first letter of each subsequent word capitalized. A hashtag in Pascal Case #LooksLikeThis, with the first letter in each word of the hashtag capitalized. If you don’t capitalize the first letter of each word, a multi-word hashtag will be read as one word to screen reader users. It is also visually harder for anyone to read multi-word hashtags that aren’t written in camel or pascal case.
4. Do not use alternative characters or unsupported formatting in your posts. Using alternative characters to bold or italicize content or unsupported formatting for spacing and indents actually breaks the accessibility of social media posts for assistive technology users. For example, if you use alternative characters, the characters will not be read by assistive technology at all. 
5. Use emojis sparingly and always prioritize content. Emojis can create a confusing and verbose experience for screen reader users, as captured in the Emoji section of the Accessible Social site. When using emojis, always keep them at the end of your post and always stick to the minimal required emojis to convey your intent.  
6. Ensure any marketing graphics you create meet color contrast guidelines. You can test the color contrast of design colors by using either the Adobe Color Contrast Checker (available online) or the TPGi Color Contrast Analyzer (downloadable desktop app). 
7. If creating Gifs, ensure your animations meet accessibility guidelines. Animations should always be used sparingly and meaningfully. When using animations, you must ensure that animation meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Animations that are not designed with accessibility in mind can trigger epilepsy and vestibular disorders, including migraines and motion sickness. They also can trigger anxiety for the mental health community as well as distract the ADHD community. Accessible Social provides you with 5 steps to ensuring accessible Gifs.