Social media is a now growing aspect of communicating with audiences. By designing accessible communications into your campaigns, you can embed good practices and engage more people across all platforms.

Creating accessible social media content shares a lot of good practice with creating accessible content in other forms, but there are some additional things to think about when publishing content to social media platforms.

To help remind you of things to check when creating and posting accessible social media content we have provided the following two checklists. The first focuses on things to consider when creating content ready for sharing social media, such as preparing alt text, planned use of emojis etc. The second focuses on steps to post accessible content including a few pointers for some of the most common social media platforms.

We also have other useful resources including:

• Accessible social media fundamentals
• Social media, regulations and your responsibilities

Download the creation checklist and the posting checklist as Word templates.

The aim in creating accessible social media content is that every user can understand your message and concept, no matter what assistive tech they are using. You should consider:

• If you are using the correct format for your content or message?

  • Consider the amount of information you will be putting into your content, character limits and appropriateness of the platform are good indicators

• Which image will you use?

  • Photos allow for easier alternative text, are more simple and therefore clearer but are not always the most appropriate or adaptable

  • Graphics can be tailor made, particularly in line with your branding but there are more accessibility considerations

    • Check the colour contrast if text is present
    • Overlapping images with text; image needs to be transparent enough
    • Legible text fonts
    • Not overcrowding the image with several different elements

• Have you created a video?

  • You must include subtitles or upload to a platform that includes them

    • YouTube is a great resource for this, but it is not always accurate
    • Embedding them into the video ensures the captions are correct

  • Does it include music?

    • If you are choosing to use music as well as a voiceover, be mindful that it is a piece that is not too ‘busy’ and a good quiet volume otherwise there’s the possibility of causing a sensory overload or at least being distracting from the information you do want to walk about

• Created a story, reel or short?

  • These are short videos, sometimes no longer than ten seconds

    • Place your subtitles correctly, not over any other information and not too close to the sides as to not crop out any words
    • Solid colour background for the text
    • Correct colour contrast for text and background
    • Don’t use illegible fonts

  • Stickers for links, locations, or hashtags

    • You have the option to rename them, name them something sensible
    • Don’t place them on the edge of the screen where people are likely to tap to the next story or at the bottom of the screen where someone can message you, there’s a higher chance of clicking the wrong thing

• Writing Captions - Writing captions is a fun process! Just keep these things in mind to make them accessible;

  • Use plain, inclusive language, so avoid any idioms or abbreviations that might not make sense to a non-native speaker
  • Hashtags: don’t make them too long and be sure to use camel case
  • Only use one or two emoji’s, that clearly cannot be misinterpreted, as a number are ambiguous in meaning. Emojipedia.
  • Use meaningful links (as in they can be understood when read out loud out of content) rather than the URL.
  • Also check that your platform can actually posts links (Instagram cannot post links within captions so it is best to use a link organiser like Link Tree.)

Once you’ve created your content you are ready to move from planning to publishing. The platforms are developing, changing, and updating every day and in the last year alone the accessibility features across most platforms have substantially improved, however that does mean that what is true in one moment, might have changed within a few weeks. We need to apply the basic principles of accessibility as much as we can within the limitations of some platforms.

How are you posting?

It can be tough choosing between a scheduling assistant or setting aside dedicated and frequent time to post. Scheduling assistants can be unreliable or have limited accessibility functions in comparison to directly posting onto the platform itself.

Instagram

• Use alternative text - If your alternative text is too long, for example if it’s for multiple images, you can write it in the caption as (Alt text: image 1…)
• Subtitles are available for videos, but not when posting to the grid unless they are embedded; you can write out your own in reels, or stories.
• Move any links to a link organiser like Link Tree as they cannot be made clickable.

Twitter and Facebook

• Use alternative text.
• Subtitles are available for videos.
• It is best to inform your user where the link is taking them to if it is not immediately obvious through your caption.

LinkedIn

• Use alternative text for images.
• Upload videos via YouTube to ensure subtitles if you have not already embedded them.
• The ‘Article’ function allows you to create extended content with appropriate accessible headings and multiple images with alternative text.
• It is best to inform your user where the link is taking them to if it is not immediately obvious through your caption.

YouTube

• Use the subtitle service through creating your own transcripts and uploading them so they are accurate.
• Avoid putting links in the description as they cannot actually be linked unless it is the full https:// URL and you will rely on users copy and pasting it into their browser otherwise.

TikTok

• Text-to-speech available for video creation
• Photosensitive epilepsy toggle and warning for both users and content creators
• Auto-captions (subtitles)