Social Media

Summary

Apply the 7 core skills when writing, responding to, and sharing posts, and follow hashtag good practices.


Impact

Impact

Social media platforms raise some access issues for individuals with disabilities. Although accessibility on social media sites is limited in a lot of ways, some features do exist in each platform. Learn some practical ways you can make your posts more inclusive.

Dos and Don'ts

Dos and Don'ts

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Add or Edit Image Alternative Text

Do

Follow our dos and don'ts for alternative text when you post social media images.

  • Facebook and Instagram add machine-generated alt text automatically but you can edit it.
  • You can add descriptive alt text to images in LinkedIn.
  • Turn on alternative text for images in your Twitter settings.

Don't

Don't accept the machine-generated alt text without checking it to see if you can provide more context for screen reader users.

Caption Videos

Do

Follow our dos and don'ts for captions when you post videos on social media.

  • Add a caption file, or use YouTube’s captioning services for Facebook videos.
  • Use the post's description area to add alternative text to caption video posts in Instagram.
  • Use closed captioning when sharing a video on LinkedIn from the desktop experience.
  • Use the larger text option for captions and make sure there is good contrast between the background and the captions in Snapchat. To make your Snap Story videos completely accessible, upload them to YouTube and caption them there.
  • Turn on alternative text for images in your Twitter settings.

Write Accessible Posts

Do

When you post or tweet a hyperlink, indicate whether it leads to an [AUDIO], [PIC], or [VIDEO] file.

Use a URL shortener (Z Link or another) to minimize the number of characters in the hyperlink.

Place hashtags at the end of posts:

  • In Facebook, put hashtags after the photo caption or description, or in a comment if you have many hashtags. 
  • Put mentions and hashtags at the end of your tweets.

Capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag.

Don't

Don't use acronyms in your posts.

Include Accessible Visuals

Do

Plan out Snap Stories to make sure they make sense for all users.

All your friends on Snapchat will benefit from Snap photos and videos that have good lighting. 

For everyday chats, use the largest possible text size and ensure that the text is legible against your background image.

How-to