- Engage C&M
- Brand
- Campus Communications
- Media & News
- Social
- Web
- Events Calendar
Accessibility in Social Media
How to make your social media posts accessible to all audiences
Accessibility is important on the web, including social media, to ensure everyone can access and engage with online content. Here’s a quick guide to making your social media content as accessible as possible.
Image descriptions
Add a description to a photo when posting to a timeline to enable dictation services to describe the image, as well as helping with SEO.
- Your platform may have a feature that allows you to add a description to a photo. Activate it under the settings and/or media section
- If the platform does not have this feature, add a description of the image in your image caption
Closed captioning on videos
YouTube and Facebook both have a built-in closed captioning system that will scan a video's audio and play it back in written form on the screen. Captions can also be added manually for accuracy:
- YouTube has a feature that offers caption writing
- Facebook has an option to add an ".srt" file which contains manually added captions
Transcriptions
The internet is full of fun images, many of them in GIF or meme form. To enable everyone to get in on the joke, transcribe what's happening in the image or animation in the caption when possible.
Stating the type of media
When sharing different types of media, precede the caption, post or image with what type of media is being shared. For example, when sharing a video to Facebook, type [VIDEO] at the top of the post to let users know what is being shared.
Hashtags in a sentence
Hashtags are still a popular tool on social media. Many users follow them.
- Avoid #SIMONFRASER or #simonfraser, as dictation tools will not be able to read hashtags that are in all lowercase or uppercase
- Write out hashtags in camel case, which leaves out spaces and punctuation: #SimonFraser
Different types of media
Keep the media types varied in all platforms. For example, in Instagram stories, create stories with text and also ones with audio or people speaking. While some disabled users will not be able to understand each type of media, having various types of audio/visual formats will allow them to access more.