5 ways to improve 'accessibility' in your brand's social media strategy - how many have you missed?

It's something that many organisations often overlook yet those living with vision, hearing, cognitive and/or motor needs may find it difficult to communicate with your brand via social media if you don't take into account accessibility when building your social media strategy.

Tip 1 - Making your images 'accessible'

Many people are unaware of the option to add 'ALT tags' to imagery across social media. Many social media publishing tools such as Sprinklr actually have built this into their platforms to make life as easy as possible for those publishing to destinations such as Facebook and Twitter. An 'ALT tag' adds a text description to an image on a web page. This helps people to understand what your image is and is extremely useful for those who are visually impaired. An example that I have published in the past can be seen below:

Tip 2 - Caption and subtitle your videos

Not only can subtitles increase SEO and engagements on your social media posts it can also help to make your channels more accessible. It's important to remember the basics here - all text should be the same size and style whilst being easy to read on moving backgrounds. If posting to platforms like Facebook and Instagram remember dimensions such as 1080x1080 and for platforms like Twitter 1024x512 to ensure that your text doesn't get distorted and can still be easily read. An example that I have published in the past can be seen below:

Tip 3 - Communicate clearly through your copy

Sometimes it's the small things that make such a difference. When posting on any social media post remember to clearly write your text for those who may need assistance. Paragraphs of copy shouldn't be bundled next to each other - instead clearly write your text with an introduction, middle and call to action (if required) - not only will it take up more screen real-estate but it is also so much easier to read! Here is one of my past examples to help visualise this:

Tip 4 - How will this sound?

I completely understand that preparing a social media strategy/calendar is time-consuming and at times frustrating if you don't have the right content, at the right time and scheduled in the right way. I'm with you. However have you ever actually 'listened' to your content prior to it going live? If your smartphone/table has a feature like iPhone's 'voice over' it may be worth checking some of your previous posts. Does your copy make sense when read aloud? Will people be able to easily interact with what it is saying? Elements such as hyperlinks ending in a series of numbers might make you re-consider some of the standard ways that your team has been working...

Tip 5 - Start learning!

It's important to make sure that you and your team always have accessible at front of mind when working together on your social media strategy. To help kick-start some joint learning I've put some of my favourite resources below:

• Windows 10 accessibility features
• Apple accessibility features
• GOV.UK Accessibility Information
• Facebook Accessibility
• Twitter Blog: How to make images accessible for people

I hope this post has helped to identify some easy ways that your organisation can start improving the accessibility of your social media strategies. Please do share your thoughts and advice with others so that we can all work together at improving the accessibility of our industry! ??