Accessible Social Media Guidelines

In today’s digital landscape, emails and social media play a vital role in communication and information sharing. Ensuring these platforms are accessible is essential for creating inclusive online spaces where everyone, including individuals with disabilities, can engage equally. Accessible social media improves readability, enhances usability with assistive technologies, and promotes broader reach and engagement. By following accessibility best practices, educators and institutions can foster more inclusive and effective communication.

• Write clear and concise captions and posts.
• Use camel case for hashtags (e.g., #AccessibleLearning instead of #accessiblelearning).
• Add alt-text to images and descriptions to videos.
• Use captions or transcripts for video content.
• Limit the use of emojis and decorative characters, as they can disrupt screen reader interpretation.
• Use descriptive text for your URL links.
• Use social media platform accessibility features (e.g., alt-text tools on X/Twitter, Instagram, BlueSky, Facebook, Discord, Snapchat, etc).
• Most social media platforms provide a preview feature for URLs. Because of this, you do not need to keep the full URL in the body of the social media message. You may have to copy/paste it over initially to create the link, but then you can erase the URL to provide an accessible description and context of the link.

Social media uses a variety of formats

Social media posts are wide-ranging in their content and format. As such, what you will have to do to make social media as accessible as possible varies depending upon the platform and purpose of your communications.

The content of Modules 1-5 will provide a foundation for you to work within the social media space and create accessible content, whether that is in text, website, video, or still image format. All of the best practices for accessibility (alt-text, font size/style, headings, color contrast, captioning, etc.) apply to social media.

Will I need multiple versions of a single communication?

While it is much easier to work with a single file that is distributed both physically and digitally (as many do when advertising events on campus), you may need to create two versions of your communication: one that works best for physical flyers and one that works best for digital accessibility.

What about others who post on my social media platform?

If you oversee a social media account, you are responsible for providing accessible materials. However, you are not responsible for the accessibility of posts created by people interacting with your social media platform. For example, if you advertise an event, and someone posts a reply with an emoji or GIF reaction that does not include alt-text, that is not your responsibility.

Some social media moderators have decided to impose posting rules that enforce accessibility for all (e.g. “Images posted without alt-text will be deleted”). This is something to consider and discuss within the group that moderates the account. If you decide to adopt such a policy, it would be important to have a pinned post that clearly outlines the rules of posting on your platform.