What if you found out that one in six people was unable to access your social media content? You’d probably make it a priority to fix that problem.
According to the World Health Organization, that’s how many people are living with a disability. Making sure your social media content is available to everyone is important to allow everyone to be included, but it’s also a smart business move.
Here are three ways to make your social media content more accessible:
Shape Up Your Captions: There’s a lot happening in a social media caption, from emojis and hashtags to the image caption. So much content means that there’s a lot to miss out on if you’re a person with a disability. But there are some guidelines you can use to improve your captions:
- No special fonts. They can be hard for people to read and difficult for screen readers to interpret.
- Use one-word hashtags if possible. If not, at least capitalize the first letter of each word so that it’s easier to identify. The autocomplete prompt on some social media platforms will turn it into one long word, so watch to make sure it posts properly.
- Enhance your posts with emojis, but don’t use them to replace words. If you add emojis, be sure to put spaces between them so that screen readers can identify them.
Use Alternative Text for Images: You’re accustomed to using this on your website and your blogs, but you may not have considered that it’s also useful for social media content. Your goal is to create text that explains what the picture is so that someone who is visually impaired would be able to receive a description of what the image is.
Add Captions to Video: Many social media platforms automatically add captions, but this automated process can include errors. Whenever you create a video, take the time to add custom captions. This makes it much easier for hearing-impaired users to enjoy your video.
Looking for more ways to make your social media content and other marketing tools more accessible? Contact us at SJC Marketing, where we have an in-house expert ready to offer guidance on how to reach more of your audience and provide a fully accessible brand experience.