Accessible Slack Posts Checklist | UMass Office of the President

About the Checklist

Use the Accessible Slack Checklist to double-check your Slack posts. This checklist is meant to remind you to include accessibility best practices in your Slack posts and help you develop good content creation habits.

Posting to Slack

I provided descriptive links when sharing links in my post.

I removed link previews when posting links.

Removing link previews reduces clutter and the length of the post. You can remove the links when posting or you can shut off link previews entirely in your user preferences. Access the Share links and set preview preferences Slack article for step by step instructions.

I used built-in bulleted and numbered list to group a list of items in my post.

What's the difference between bulleted lists and numbered lists? Bulleted (or unordered) lists are used when the order of the items is not relevant. Numbered (or ordered) lists convey a list of items that happen exactly in the order that’s provided. Numbered lists should be used for step-by-step instructions or process flows.

If my post is long and would require scrolling, I broke up the content into threaded responses.

Long content is harder to read in Slack, especially if it’s long paragraphs of content. Similar to social media, you can make a high level post and then add details via threaded replies within the post to make it easier for folks using assistive technology to navigate your content.

I added alt text to any images in my post.

When uploading an image to Slack, use the Edit file details link to add alt text through the Description field. The alternative text should be descriptive and meaningful. Access the Add descriptions to images Slack article for step by step instructions.

I did not use Gifs that pulsate, strobe, flash, or have jarring movements

Epilepsy, vestibular disorders, and general motion sensitivity can be triggered by digital animations (though not everyone with a vestibular disorder is impacted by animations and the level of impact varies by person). Motion-triggered health conditions include seizures, nausea, migraine headaches, vertigo, and potentially needing bed rest to recover. Everyone should avoid animations that can trigger any of these conditions, including any animations that pulsate, strobe, flash, or having jarring movements.

I provided a warning and posted the Gif in a thread for any Gifs that could trigger a health condition.

I posted a description of the Gif for anyone using a screen reader or that has animations shut off.

There is currently no way to post the alt text within the Gif as you can with an image in Slack. Instead, you can post the description right after the Gif.

When sharing documents on Slack, I ensured they follow accessibility best practices.

When sharing videos, I shared videos that include captions and a transcript.

When sharing event information, I remembered to post all the content as text in Slack, instead of making the event information into an image-based flyer.

Using Threads

I used the reply in thread feature to reply to a post.

When someone asks a question or posts a message that you want to respond to, the best way to respond is through the Reply in Thread feature. This improves the overall experience for neurodivergent, low vision, and blind users: Neurodivergent employees do have have to worry about being distracted by Slack alerts that are not relevant to them. Blind and low visions employees do not receive constant alerts of new messages via their screen reader on conversations that are not relevant to them. Threads improve the overall experience for anyone using Slack as it reduces the number of notifications everyone receives and gives everyone the chance to opt in to discussions. To loop someone into a thread discussion that you feel should be participating, you can tag that person directly within the thread. In addition, everyone benefits from the following aspects of threads: Threads organize the content so responses do not clutter up a channel. Replies are always attached to the original message, so the context is never lost. If you didn’t have time to engage in the conversation at the time it was happening, you can easily catch up and respond within the context of the post.

When replying to a thread, I avoided using the “Also send to [channel]” feature.

When you use this feature, it creates both a post in the channel and a threaded reply, defeating the purpose of using threads. If you need someone to engage in the thread that is not already in the thread, the recommendation is to tag that person. The only time you should use the "Also send to channel" feature is if you have concluded a discussion and believe a final summary of the discussion is important for everyone in the channel to read. That final summary could then be sent to the channel using the "Also send to channel" feature while also keeping it in the thread for future reference.