Tag Archives: Accessibility

Tips on Tuesday

The one size fits all approach never works!

Does your social media plan consider accessibility?

With no such thing as an “average user”, it is vital you ensure your social media strategy covers inclusive design methods.

What is inclusive design? Quite simply inclusive design accounts for diversity—including ability, language, gender, age, and other factors—and enables people to engage in a variety of ways.

Accessibility matters for social media, because without inclusive design you’re potentially missing out on a large audience.  Did you know 71% of excluded web visitors will simply leave rather than complain?  A survey by Facebook found that more than 30% of people report difficulty with at least one of the following: seeing, hearing, speaking, organizing thoughts, walking, or grasping with their hands.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to help you make your social media inclusive and diverse.  After all what is better than creating great, accessible experiences for everyone in your audience?!

Tips on Tuesday

Sometimes “short and sweet” is all you need!

Did you know 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound? That means your immediate action needs to be to make your video offering compelling without audio.

Ensure any speech is subtitled – not only does this mean you can capture those watching in silence through choice, but also people with hearing impairments; accessibility of content is such good practice!

Make your videos short, fun and above all on brand, sharing your message by image only. Of course this is a challenge, but one that will be worth it!

Tips on Tuesday

In the past few weeks we’ve been discussing Inclusive Design and how your social strategy should always include a fully accessible user-experience.

We’ve long been an advocate of video content on your social profiles, but did you know to be fully accessible all your videos should be subtitled? 

Not only do subtitles create a user-friendly experience for people with hearing impairments, but they also enhance the viewing for people not watching in their native language or for people who are in sound-off environments. 

Imagine such a small change making your video accessible to so many more people!!

Tips on Tuesday

We’ve been discussing the importance of Inclusive Design and how some small changes to your social media posts can make them more accessible to more people.

Emojis are great fun to use, and when used appropriately add a welcome bit of lightheartedness to your posts.  However, text-to-speech software reads out a description for every emoji you use, so be careful with the number you include.

Hearing “one gold star” isn’t terrible, but hearing “one gold star” repeated 10 times throughout a message is not only tiresome, but alters the meaning of the entire post.

Remember, in this case less is certainly more!

Tips on Tuesday

We spoke last week about the importance of Inclusive Design and over the next few weeks we’re going to be giving bitesize tips on how to make your social media accessible.

You’re on social media, you’re using a hashtag right?  Did you know that for best practice when you’re using hashtags, you should always use CamelCase and capitalise the first letter of every word?

Not only does this mean  that screen readers can read out the hashtags correctly, it also makes them easier to read for everybody else.

This is something we have consciously been focussing on in our social media strategy, as we consider how to make social media accessible for everyone!

Tips on Tuesday

The one size fits all approach never works!

Does your social media plan consider accessibility?

With no such thing as an “average user”, it is vital you ensure your social media strategy covers inclusive design methods.

What is inclusive design? Quite simply inclusive design accounts for diversity—including ability, language, gender, age, and other factors—and enables people to enage in a variety of ways.

Accessibility mattters for social media, because without inclusive design you’re potentially missing out on a large audience.  Did you know 71% of excluded web visitors will simply leave rather than complain?  A survey by Facebook found that more than 30% of people report difficulty with at least one of the following; seeing, hearing, speaking, organizing thoughts, walking, or grasping with their hands.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to help you make your social media inclusive and diverse.  After all what is better than creating great, accessible experiences for everyone in your audience?!

Tips on Tuesday

Sometimes “short and sweet” is all you need!

Did you know 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound? That means your immediate action needs to be to make your video offering compelling without audio.

Ensure any speech is subtitled – not only does this mean you can capture those watching in silence through choice, but also people with hearing impairments; accessibility of content is such good practice!

Make your videos short, fun and above all on brand; sharing your message by image only. Of course this is a challenge, but one that will be worth it!

Tips on Tuesday

Sometimes “short and sweet” is all you need!

Did you know 85% of Facebook videos are watched without sound? That means your immediate action needs to be to make your video offering compelling without audio.

Ensure any speech is subtitled – not only does this mean you can capture those watching in silence through choice, but also people with hearing impairments; accessibility of content is such good practice!

Make your videos short, fun and above all on brand; sharing your message by image only. Of course this is a challenge, but one that will be worth it!

Tips on Tuesday

We’ve recently been discussing Inclusive Design and how you can make small changes to ensure your social media presence is fully accesible.

Image of question mark

A really simple way of ensuring screen-readers can accurately represent your posts, is by ensuring that you add an image description.  This means that anyone using a screen-reader can quite simply have the details of the image you use to support your content read out to them.

Whilst social media platforms make it easy to add alternative text (alt text) to your images, it’s best to include your descriptions in the body of each post.  You can simply add it in brackets or at the bottom of your post. 

Remember descriptions don’t need to be lengthy, but simply represent the image e.g. “cat sitting on a rug”.

Tips on Tuesday

In the past few weeks we’ve been discussing Inclusive Design and how you can make small changes to your social media presence to ensure they’re accessible to as many people as possible.

Subtitle image

We’ve long been an advocate of video content on your social profiles, but did you know to be fully accessible all your videos should be subtitled? 

Not only do subtitles create a user-friendly experience for people with hearing impairments, but they also enhance the viewing for people not watching in their native language or for people who are in sound-off environments.  Imagine such a small change making your video accessible to so many more people!!