Accessibility on Social Media

• Image descriptions
• Video captions, transcripts
• Writing style and language
• Tips

Image descriptions

• Provide invisible text descriptions that supplement visible text
• Avoid duplicating visible text or adjacent content
• Don’t write long image descriptions
• Consider Easter eggs only if suitable

• Add to images and GIFs
• Limit: 1000 characters
• No longer needs to be enabled in settings
• Auto-generates image descriptions for most GIFs

• Supported for images in posts
• Not supported on Facebook stories
• Auto-generates image descriptions
• Limit: none?
• Alt text or image captions?

• Add to images only
• Not supported on Instagram stories
• Auto-generates image descriptions
• Limit: 100 characters

• Website only
• Add to images
• Limit: 120 characters
• Auto-generates image descriptions?

• Add to images, GIFs and videos
• Limit: 1500 characters
• Attempts to detect text in an image

• Buffer supports Twitter image descriptions (website and mobile apps)
• Hootsuite supports image descriptions (website only) for Twitter, LinkedIn profiles or pages, and Facebook groups or pages
• EasyChirp supports image descriptions

Videos

Subtitles, captions and transcripts serve different audiences

• Subtitles – language barriers
• Captions – hard of hearing or deaf
• Transcripts – plain text alternative
• Audio description – additional audio commentary

• Capture speech and significant non-verbal sounds – “[music]”, “[applause]”…
• Great for social media
• Deaf, hard of hearing, commuters, noisy places…
• Open versus closed captions
• Seeing a speaker's face

• For people who cannot access audio or video
• Also capture speech and significant non-verbal sounds

• More difficult for transient social media
• Link to a transcript as a minimum

• ✅  YouTube – automatic
• ✅  Facebook – with third party via API
• ❌  Twitter – not supported
• ⚠️  LinkedIn – registered LinkedIn Live Broadcasters only

How to caption

• Supported formats: .SBV .SRT .VTT and more…
• Automatically captions the videos you upload
• Also captions livestream videos
• Great starting point…

• Community contributions (crowdsourcing) discontinued from September 2020
• Contribute transcriptions, captions and translations (subtitles)

• Uses your captions
• Displays next to the video
• Automatically scrolls as the video plays

• Supported format: .SRT
• Automatically generates captions for uploaded videos
• Use the captions you downloaded from YouTube
• Must use language code in file name

accessu-captions.en_US.srt

• Not supported
• Transcript in post?
• Link to a transcript
• Link to a video with closed captions / a transcript

• Supported format: .SRT
• Website only

Same as for Facebook…

• Not supported
• Transcript in post?
• Link to a transcript
• Link to a video with closed captions / a transcript

• Supported format: .SRT
• Confusingly called "subtitles"
• Need to use Twitter Media Studio (invitation only) or API
• Use open captions (more in a moment)
• Link to a video with closed captions

• ?cc_load_policy=1

• Supports descriptions on videos
• No closed caption support
• Use open captions (more in a moment)

• Helpful where closed captions are difficult
• But viewers cannot customise

• Size – must be readable
• Font – clear and don't use ALL CAPS
• Background and text color – solid, contrasting, consistent

• Clips — free app from Apple that automatically adds open captions as you record
• Clipomatic — paid app, but easy to use and automatically adds accurate open captions as you record
• Caption This — paid app, automatically adds open captions as you record or to existing videos (crashes)

• AutoCap – free app you that adds open captions to the videos you record

Writing for social media

• People read differently online
• Use plain language whenever possible
• Use short sentences
• Use simple words – prefer shorter words to long words
• Front-loading important information
• Avoid using ALL CAPS
• Avoid ableist language
• Use inclusive language

• Emojis are fun, but their descriptions can be verbose
• 👏don’t👏do👏this👏 = graphic emoji colon clapping hands sign
• Use sparingly
• Unicode characters don’t always display in browsers
• Typically not announced by screen readers

• #PascalCase or #UpperCamelCase
• #camelCase or #lowerCamelCase or #dromedaryCase
• Use Pascal Case capitalisation
• Better for screen readers – words tend to get announced correctly
• Better for scan reading in general

Note: Not all screen readers announce #PascalCase as separate words

• Social media accessibility guide
• Improving Your Tweet Accessibility
• 6 ways to make your social media posts accessible for people with a visual impairment

• Writing for GOV.UK
• Hemingway Editor
• Writing for Every Reader

Questions?