Accessible Social Media
Accessible Social Media
Social media is an integral part of society as well as how news and information is spread throughout campus. While every platform is different and may not incorporate specific accessibility aids, it is our job to utilize the resources provided to best provide accessibility through all platforms.
Ways to be More Accessible Through Social Media
There are several features to keep in mind when creating content for social media.
- Captions: Captions are an important component when creating video content. Ensure that your videos have adequate captions by reviewing your videos. It is better to write your own captions or review captions, as auto-generated captions are likely to be mistakes with misinterpretations, missed speech sounds, etc
- Audio Descriptions: Audio Descriptions are another important feature of video content. Audio Descriptions provide information on visual content that is considered essential to the comprehension of the program. In these cases, not providing Audio Descriptions would inhibit blind and visually impaired individuals from gaining a complete understanding of the given video.
- Hashtags: Ensure that when writing hashtags, you are capitalizing the first letter of each word. This technique, known as camel case, ensures that screen readers will be able to effectiely convey information to the user.
- Avoid GIFs: Animated GIFs have very limited or no accessibility support. Screen readers have difficulty processing the GIFs, so ensure that the content can be understood and processed without the GIF.
- Avoid Excessive Emojis: While emojis will be read out by a screen reader, they are described. Due to this, try to not use an overabundance of emojis.
Accessibility Across Social Media Websites
- YouTube offers a variety of solutions for providing captioning.
- YouTube automatically generates captions for most videos. They are not always accurate and need to be edited. YouTube makes this easy through their platform.
- Another option YouTube provides is typing the captions while the video plays, auto-sync. With this option, however, you will need to set the timing to sync with your video.
- Other forms include uploading a file that contains the text of what was said in the video, including timestamps, position, and style information. Alternatively, you can input the information manually by selecting Type Manually, entering your captions, and selecting Publish.
YouTube provides a webpage that details how to edit or remove captions that can be found here: Editing or removing captions on YouTube
X, formerly known as Twitter, is an online news and social networking site where people communicate in short messages. Posts, also known as Tweets, are short messages for anyone who follows you on X, with the hope that your words are useful and interesting to someone in your audience.
- The iOS and Android X apps are accessible using VoiceOver and TalkBack (respectively). Twitter also allows you to compose a description of the images. Find out the exact steps here: How to write image descriptions on X/Twitter
- Twitter also allows you to add caption to their posts, as well as auto generate captions
- Twitter can utilize shortcut keys to navigate the site.
Instagram is a free, online photo-sharing application and social network platform that was acquired by Facebook in 2012. The photo-sharing app offers companies the opportunity to start a free business account to promote their brand and products. Links are NOT clickable
- To improve accessibility on the platform, Instagram uses automatic alternative text to hear the descriptions of photos through screen readers. Instagram also introduces custom alternative text to allow the user to add richer description of uploaded photos. People using screen readers will be able to hear this description.
- Auto-generated captions for Instagram Video: When uploading a video, captions will be created automatically and remain on unless manually turned off.
- Auto-generated captions are supported globally on Android and iOS in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Arabic, Vietnamese, Italian, German, Turkish, Russian, Thai, Tagalog, Urdu, Malay, Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese. .
- Captions sticker on Stories: When creating a video on Stories, go to the sticker tray, select Captions and then rewatch your video to view the auto-generated text. If you want to change something, tap the word (or words) and edit the text.
- Captions sticker on Reels: This sticker works the exact same way in Reels as it does in Stories, automatically converting audio to text.
Instagram provides a dedicated accessibility page that details how to create accessible content. This link can be found here: Accessibility on Instagram
This social media site is a great place to post updates and connect community members through the usage of posts. Being one of the older social media sites, Facebook made their Facebook Accessibility Team in 2011. The site is keyboard operable, with access keys to lead back to specific pages as well as shortcut keys to do more specific tasks (such as sharing a story or liking a post). They have also been working on a Dynamic Alt Text Generator for photos and video.
Facebook provides a dedicated accessibility page that details how to create accessible content. This link can be found here: Accessibility on Facebook
TikTok is a video streaming app for mobile devices that allows users to upload videos no longer than 3 minutes. With an endless stream of content, brands, companies, schools, staff, etc. It has become a great tool for promoting upcoming events and spreading word overall. They have made several strides with their accessibility features including photosensitive epilepsy toggle and warning, text-to-speech, auto captions, and animated thumbnails.
- Text-to-speech converts typed text to a voiceover that plays over the text as it appears in the video. This feature is particularly helpful for visually impaired or blind users.
- The animated thumbnail toggle provides users the option to choose from animated or static video images. This helps users who may be sensitive to flashing images.
- Auto captions transcribe a video’s spoken audio into text. This feature helps viewers who are deaf or hard of hearing enjoy content without missing context.
- Viewers can opt out of videos that contain creative effects that may be harmful to those with photosensitive epilepsy or those who suffer from light-induced migraines. Warning labels are also shown to creators on specific effects that may trigger photosensitive epilepsy.
Tiktok provides a dedicated accessibility page that details how to create accessible content. This link can be found here: Accessibility on TikTok
LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network on the internet. You can use LinkedIn to find the right job or internship, connect and strengthen professional relationships, and learn the skills you need to succeed in your career. The website is well-formatted, making it accessible to screen readers.
LinkedIn's Accessibility page links to their Disability Help Desk, as well as several articles detailing different aspects of their accessiblity journey. This link can be found here: Accessibility on LinkedIn
Canva is a popular poster and document maker. It is typically used for making posters and social media posts. Canva has a built in accessibility checker.
Canva provides a dedicated accessibility page that details how to create accessible content. This link can be found here: Accessibility on Canva
Zoom’s platform supports live captioning during meetings. This feature enables captions to be typed directly into Zoom or add a 3rd party software/service.
If a Zoom meeting is recorded and saved to the cloud, Zoom can generate captions for the video using automatic speech recognition (ASR). These usually require editing, but lays the groundwork for captioning rather than beginning from scratch.
Zoom provides links for accessible captioning:
The American Council of the Blind (ACB) has developed a list of USA audio description service providers.
List of free captioning services. For each service, the instructions are very similar. Start by uploading your video to the web, either attach the video’s URL or upload the video to their site (this varies based on sites), watch the video and transcribe.
