Accessible Social Media
Scrolling through social media should be an inclusive experience, but what if you couldn’t see images, hear videos, or understand cryptic hashtags?
Without accessibility in mind, many users are left out of the conversation. Simple tweaks—like alt text, captions, and clear language—make social media content available to everyone.
Accessible hashtags
[Image of cartoon man looking confused at phone screen with dramatic sting noise]
How would you read this hastag #sasanalbumparty? I'm not sure? Are you? [whistle] I'm just kidding. It's "Susan album party"...obviously.
Just like you and me, a screen reader can't necessarily make sense of the hashtags it encounters. While there are humorous examples, the reality is, inaccessible hastags are a consisten problem.
Making Accessible Hashtags
There's an easy way to make your hashtags accessible. It's about capitalizing the words to make it clear where one ends and the next begins.
[Image example #MakingAccessibleHashtags]
The main way to do this is to use camel case. No, I'm not kidding. Camel case is when you run the words togther and capitalize all the words after the first one. It's called camel case because the humps make it look a bit like a camel.
Making accessible hashtags is easy. But to make a stretch camel we needed more text. [Image shows a very long camel with many humps in it's back with a long hashtag].
Remember, camel case is easy to use and make your hashtags accessible to everyone.
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Tips to improve social media posts:
CamelCase Hashtags
Capitalize each word in hashtags (e.g., #InclusiveAndAccessible) to enhance readability.
Images & Videos
Always include descriptive (and relevant) alt text for images and provide accurate captions for videos.
Color Contrast
Text in images should be legible with a high contrast ratio between the text and the background. How to check color contrast.
Plain Language
Avoid using acronyms, abbreviations and text messaging lingo. Use straightforward language and short sentences.
Shorten URLs
URLs get read out by screen readers. Use a URL shortener to minimize the number of characters.
Sharing Posts
If you share someone else’s image with missing alt text, include a description in your post.
Emojis
Avoid overloading posts with emojis. Place spaces between multiple emojis so they’re not read as a single word to screen readers.
Avoid “Creative” Typography
Playing around with cute fonts has become popular in social bios and posts. But these don’t work well with assistive technologies.
Canva
Canva offers many helpful tips and tools to help improve the accessibility of your designs.
From the Editor, select File » Accessibility » Check Design Accessibility to open the Design Accessibility window on your editor.
How to check color contrast and other accessibility tools inside Canva.
In Summary: Accessible social media starts with you. Create awareness for your entire digital marketing team about accessibility so that consumers engage with you on their terms, no matter the platform or format.