Quick & Easy Accessibility Online

When it comes to my work as a Social Media Manager, accessibility is one of my favorite topics to talk about. It is my personal belief that you shouldn't need to have a vision or hearing impairment to care about digital accessibility or educate yourself about it.

While I've discussed a few different ways to make your social media more accessible before (to the tune of 2,000+ words), there are several quick and easy ways to make your digital presence as a whole more technically inclusive.

• Use emojis sparingly to avoid their meta descriptions confusing the overall message of your post or tweet when read by a screen reader. Visit the site emojipedia.org if you're not sure what description has been assigned to a specific icon.
• Make sure that you're captioning your videos whenever possible. If your video is a minute or shorter, you can use the app Clipomatic to caption as you record.
• Use the Twitter accessibility setting and add image descriptions to any tweets that feature pictures or graphics.
• Avoid posting pictures or images that have a lot of text on them, as a screen reader or text-to-speech program more than likely won't be able to read the text or properly describe the image.
• Instead of posting JPG flyers promoting an event, create a Facebook event post or use a site like Eventbrite to advertise it. Clickable information is always preferable to flattened text on an image!
• Add alt text to your Instagram posts before you publish them.
• Make sure that you're using descriptive links instead of the generic "click here" when hyperlinking text in blog posts, webpages, and emails (for examples, see most of the hyperlinked texted in this post).
• Type your hashtags in #CamelCase. That just means instead of typing #accessibilitymatters, you type #AccessiblityMatters.
• You should also make sure that your Twitter handle is in Camel Case. Screen readers use capital letters and spaces to denote different words, which can make a difference in how your @ handle is read aloud. Unfortunately, this isn't possible with Instagram handles yet.
• When you post an image on LinkedIn, remember to add alt text to it.
• Avoid placing emojis in your Twitter name (different from your Twitter @ handle), as it's typically read every time a screen reader transcribes a tweet. The meta description of emojis can make your Twitter name much longer than intended.
• Add alt text to the GIFs you tweet.
• Resist changing the color on customizable emojis. Every unique icon gets descriptor information, which is then read aloud by screen readers. That includes skin tones.
• Use web-friendly typography on websites, webpages, and digital materials. Sans Serif typefaces are typically considered easier to read than Serif or Script fonts.
• If you have a link in a tweet, indicate what type of media it leads to by adding [IMAGE], [VIDEO], or [AUDIO] so screen reader users can anticipate what they will find when they click the link. 
• Learn how to modify the automatically-generated alt text on your Facebook pictures so they're less vague, or, better yet, write your own custom alt text!
• Avoid using custom fonts and symbols on your social media. This trend is pretty, but the non-native fonts and symbols aren't typically readable for screen readers.
• Place emojis at the end of posts and tweets. The more important information should be consumed by the user before the emoji metadata.
• Don't forget to add alt text to images on your website.
• Use the large text option for Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram story posts. You should also make sure that there's high contrast in your stories to make any text more readable. Sadly, none of these platforms have figured out a way to make their stories feature accessible for screen readers.
• Educate yourself on SRT files and how to caption videos on YouTube or Vimeo.

No one is ever going to be the epitome of accessibility perfection online (I'm certainly not), but making an effort is better than not trying at all, especially for major brands and organizations.

For web and social media professionals, I highly recommend occasionally turning on whatever accessibility function you have built into your smartphone. Experiencing the digital world from the vantage point of someone who has to use a screen reader or text-to-speech program to navigate it full-time may give you a new perspective on accessibility best practices.

Have questions about accessibility or know some other great tips to make your digital presence more inclusive? Drop a message in my LinkedIn inbox or hit me up on Twitter at @HashtagHeyAlexa. Let's chat!