Accessible Social Media Checklist | UMass Office of the President

About the Checklist

Use the Accessible Social Checklist to double-check your social media content before publishing it online. Please note that this checklist is not meant to be exhaustive or a fix-all for your content. It will remind you to include accessible best practices in your social media strategy and help you develop good content creation habits. Before you know it, they’ll become a natural part of your process and you’ll no longer need the checklist!

Credit to Alexa Heinrich for creating the original checklist that's on the Accessible Social site. We are hosting a web-based version on our site to provide a more accessible and mobile responsive checklist.

Copy and Formatting

I used hashtags in moderation.

I properly formatted multi-word hashtags using Pascal Case.

A hashtag in Pascal Case or Title Case #LooksLikeThis, with the first letter in each word of the hashtag capitalized.

I placed hashtags at the end of posts and tweets when possible.

I placed any hashtag clouds in the first comment of my Instagram posts instead of the caption area.

I didn’t use tabs or spaces to manipulate the formatting of my written content.

I avoided using studly case in my copy.

Studly case is when you alternate every letter between uppercase and lowercase. Example of Studly case: YoU rOcK!

I did my best to write in plain language.

I used emoji in moderation.

I didn’t use emoji as bullet points.

I avoided putting emoji in the middle of written content.

I stuck to the default yellow emoji unless a custom skin tone was necessary for context.

I double-checked all emoji descriptions on emojipedia.org before using them.

I didn’t use any alternative characters from external websites to make my type appear in different weights, styles, or fonts.

I didn’t use ASCII Art in any of my posts.

ASCII art is a design technique that uses letters, numbers, punctuation, and other characters from the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) to make illustrative pictures.

Images and Visuals

I wrote appropriate alt text for all of my images, including GIFs

I made sure to include any flattened copy from my visuals in the image description.

If an image had excessive flattened copy on it like an official statement or organizational update, I linked out from the post or tweet to a webpage where the full statement was available as readable text and also added the appropriate alt text to the image.

Any graphics I used in my content had suitable contrast applied to the colors to ensure that the copy was legible.

Audio and Video

I captioned all videos that contained dialogue and/or informative audio.

I provided a link to a transcript in the social media post.

I provided a description of the visual elements of my videos either through copy or audio when possible.

I made live captioning and a live transcript available for any live videos or streams.

I did not use any flashing, strobe, or erratic movement effects in my videos.

Flashing, strobe, and erratic movement effects can trigger epilepsy, a vestibular disorder (migraines, vertigo, etc.), or motion sensitivity.