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Accessible Social Media
Including, not excluding, people with disabilities from social media platforms is not hard. But it does require attention to detail
Social media is a very popular tool among people with disabilities to stay connected despite the fact that most social media tools are not fully accessible. Staying connected electronically is even more important if a disability prevents a person from being able to easily travel. By posting pictures or videos of themselves and discussing issues that impact them every day, people with disabilities are also bringing awareness to their very particular and personal issues.
It is important to understand that people and companies posting on social media have no control over the platforms’ infrastructures. That being said, there are practical limitations to what corporations can accomplish with respect to accessibility on the social media channels they choose to use. Most social media platforms have accessibility teams, and accessibility improvements are continually rolled out as technology continues to improve at a rapid pace.
Many people posting content to social media platforms — for either personal reasons or as part of their job — do not consider or use accessibility features. While the social media platform may not be friendly to all forms of assistive technology, companies can and do control the content they post and should take the necessary steps to make that content as accessible as possible. In many cases, even if the platform doesn’t natively offer accessibility tools, workarounds can be implemented to improve accessibility.
Without mentioning any one platform, here is an initial list of accessibility principles that companies should be following with respect to their social media campaigns.
Provide text descriptions for all non-text Visuals
All non-decorative images and videos should have a text alternative to match the visual information being conveyed.
Informative Graphics
Some social media tools allow you to specify a description for an image, in other cases, text alternatives for informational images must be placed in the body of the post.
