Additional Accessibility Guides
Social Media Accessibility
On this page:
Follow these guidelines to ensure social media posts are accessible and inclusive.
Social Media Best Practices
Plain Language
Plain language helps readers:
- Find what they need.
- Understand what they find.
- Use what they find.
Review plain language best practices.
Tips for using plain language in social media:
- Start with the most important information.
- Use short, clear sentences. Avoid run-on sentences.
- Choose common words with basic, direct meanings.
- Avoid ableist language such as “lame” or “that’s crazy”.
- Avoid clickbait, vague statements, or unncessary details.
- Spell out acronyms and initialisms.
- Use a link shortener (bit.ly or tinyurl) when appropriate.
- Including #Hastags and @mentions in the middle of a sentence can be confusing. Consider placing them at the end of your post.
Emojis and Hashtags
Screen readers and many text to speech programs can read out unicode emoji graphics. However, text based emoticons created by combining slashes, colons, paranthesis, etc. are read out as their individual symbols.
Even with accessible emoji graphics, use them sparingly. Consider that 🙂🙂🙂🙂 is not only visually obtrusive, a screen reader will read “smiley face smiley face smiley face smiley face.”
Do: 🙂
Don’t: 🙂 or 🙂🙂🙂🙂
Place emojis at the end of sentences instead of the middle.
In addition to considerate emoji use, avoid:
- Leetspeak/Calculator spelling such as “80t5” in place of “bots”
- Text emoticons such as >:(
- ASCII art such as (^._.^)~
- Studly Case such as pReSsBoOkS
Hashtags
When adding hashtags use Pascal case by capitalizing the first letter of each word. This makes hashtags more accessible to screen readers and text to speech software. Without Pascal case, hashtags are read as one long, incomprehensible word. Pascal case also allows visual readers to easily differentiate words in the hashtag.
Do: #LangaraCollege #ThisIsTheBestWayToTypeAHashtag
Do not: #langaracollege #thisisnotagoodhashtagandhardtoread
Alt Text
Alt text should provide a concise description including the essential information about the image. Consider how you would describe the image to someone over the phone. Machine-generated alt text is becoming more common, but is rarely accurate or useful; review and edit machine-generated alt text.
Read more about alt text in the Alternative Text chapter of this Pressbook. Review the instructions for relevant platforms below.
Use descriptive hyperlink text. Review the link best practices outlined earlier in this book.
Closed Captions
Most social media platforms offer automatic captioning. Automatic captions are rarely more than 80% accurate, but are a good place to start. Use automatic captioning and edit manually to improve accuracy.
Read the captioning chapter of this Pressbook for best practices.
General Platform Instructions
Facebook posts have a limit of 60,000 characters, so you have space to spell out acronyms and abbreviations. Introduce an acronym by spelling out the acronym in full with the acronym in parentheses following, for example: Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
When adding a link to a Facebook post, ensure you enter a description of the link’s destination in the Description field. Check the No Thumbnail before posting.
In addition to adding alternative text to photos, you can also add a caption to photos. Alt text is coded for assistive technology, but captions are visible text to all users. Alt text should describe the image, but a caption could be a title or used to give credit.
Alt Text
To add alt text to a photo:
- Select the paint brush icon labelled Edit Photo
- Select the Alt Text tab and select Override generated alt text
- Add alt text in the text field and select Save.
You can also edit alt text on existing photos.
- Find the photo and select Options.
- Select Change Alt Text.
- Select Override generated alt text, enter a description, and select Save.
Captions
Adding captions to videos on Facebook profile
Adding captions to videos on Facebook page
Facebook Accessibility Help Center
While you can add videos to Facebook, it might be better to upload your video to Kaltura and then provide a link on Facebook. This allows you to share the video on other platforms.
Twitter’s short character limits make accessibility a challenge. Consider the following tips:
- Avoid acronyms and abbreviations. When used, expand/explain.
- Consider providing indicators such as [PIC] or [VIDEO] when linking to such content.
- Use a link shortener (bit.ly or tinyurl) when appropriate.
- Use (part of) the tweet itself as a description of what the link is
- Link to accessible content.
- End with #Hastags and @mentions.
- Use Pascal Case for hastags.
Alt Text
- Attach photo to new Tweet.
- Select Add description.
- Type description and select Done.
Read about Twitter alt text badges.
Captions
Twitter now automatically captions videos. At the time of the writing of this Pressbook, these automatically generated captions cannot be edited.
Captions display only when the viewer’s device is muted.
Twitter also allows for uploading .SRT files (read more about .SRT in the Captions chapter of this Pressbook)
- Click on a video within your Media Studio library.
- Select the Subtitles tab in the pop-up window.
- Select the text language of your subtitle file from the dropdown menu.
- Click the Upload button and select the .SRT file from your local computer.
- Select Done.
As with other social media platforms:
- Use Pascal Case for hashtags.
- Expand/explain acronyms and abbreviations.
- Use the caption of your post to explain the connection between a series of photos.
Alt Text
- Take photo, apply filters, and select Next.
- Select Advanced Settings.
- Choose Write Alt Text.
- Add alt text and select Done.
- Change/add alt text to existing photo by selecting Edit.
- Choose Edit Alt Text.
- Enter description and select Done.
Captions
Currently, Instagram only offers captions on Stories.
- Upload video.
- Choose Stickers.
- Select Captions sticker.
- Choose caption style.
- Save.
TikTok
TikTok will warn creators when adding special effects that may trigger photosensitive epilepsy.
When adding text overlays, select the text and choose Text-to-speech. This will provide a voiceover of the text when the video plays.
After uploading or recording a video, the editing page will prompt creators to enable automatic captions. Captions can be edited by selecting the pencil in the right hand panel.
Visit Accessible-social.com for common social media accessibility best practices and additional resources.
Linked text to another document or part of document that the user can follow by selecting. Effective hyperlink text should make sense independent of the content around it.
