Social media

Last updated: 6 January, 2020

Following this helps people with:

sound turned off on their mobile
no headphones
hearing impairments
visual impairments

Guidelines

Design your social media content so that everyone can access it. Lobby social media platforms to make accessibility and inclusive design easier.

1. Capitalise the first letter of each word in hashtags.

2. Use the image description functions.

3. If you add a GIF image, include a description of it in your tweet.

4. Caption videos and multimedia.

Usability evidence

1. Capitalise the first letter of each word in hashtags.

Do this so that text to speech software will be able to read the correct words out separately. It also makes hashtags easier to read for everyone. And it prevents accidentally worded hashtags!

Example:

I like #ContentDesign.

Also, use words not acronyms. Though it may feel very well known to you, it's unlikely anyone else will instantly recognise your unwieldy acronym hashtag. For example, #FOMOOGLF. Which apparently stands for "fear of missing out on Greyhound low fares."

2. Use image description functions.

Twitter

Configure your Twitter settings so that you get the option to add an audio description to images you post. This is not an automatic function yet so you have to go to the Settings > Accessibility to set it up.

Set up image description – Twitter Help Center.

Instagram

You can give a detailed description of your images right when you post it, or you can edit the alt text.

Edit the alternative text – Instagram.

3. If you add a GIF image, include a description of it.

People add GIF images to make their posts funnier, warmer, have another dimension. If you do not include a description of the GIF someone using text to speech software will miss out on that.

Add a description of the GIF to your tweet.

Example:

"Content designers often like notepads, reading, #InclusiveDesign and cats. [GIF: cat curled up on top of a pile of books]"

4. Caption videos and multimedia.

This is useful for deaf people and also for people who have the sound turned off on their mobiles.

Also, provide a transcript for audio and video content. As well as making the content available for deaf people and people without headphones it makes your content more findable by search engines, so helps everyone access the material.