With the average user spending 2 hours and 3 minutes a day on social media world-wide, the need for inclusivity is paramount. Our NCI mission aims to “support services to people who are deaf or hard of hearing and others who, for whatever reason, wherever situated and irrespective of their economic conditions, are limited in their ability to participate fully in the world of auditory or visual communications.” 

In the ongoing effort to continuously fulfill that mission, we thought we would share a few easy things you can do right now to make social media more inclusive for everyone. Share the love!

1 — Use Alt Text or Image Descriptions

Blind users utilizing assistive technology such as screen readers rely on alternative text (commonly called alt text) or descriptions to better understand a displayed image. Alt text is a succinct but descriptive summary of the image. It has several uses but, most importantly for accessibility, it is what is read aloud to the blind user in place of the image. 

Most popular social media apps have an alt text field for you to easily fill out for every photo. It takes a tiny extra bit of time and makes a huge impact for users. Here are links to alt text instructions for Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and Instagram.

A few tips to help you out:

• Keep your descriptions succinct but illustrative. For example, in reference to the image on the left, a good description might be “Accessible Entry Sign.” A better description might be ”Metal Accessible Entry sign posted on a multi-colored brick wall.”

• Do not use “image of” or “graphic of.” It wastes characters and impedes the readability flow. Screen readers will read “image of” ahead of the description, and if it is added in, the user will hear “image of image of.”

• If you post a detailed graphic that would warrant a longer description than the alt text field has allowance for, you can write it out in the post itself, link to a text version, or as a last option, write it in the comments. The screen reader is NOT able to read what is on the image itself. A free online text-from-graphic image extractor can be found here.

2 — Add Your Own Text to Short Videos

In addition to ensuring videos you re-post from others have a closed captioning option for deaf viewers, you should also quickly use the text option to write out anything verbalized on camera. This is a quick do-it-yourself option for brief videos like Instagram stories. 

To the left is an example with an Instagram story. The thumbnail image demonstrates where you can manually add your text and the video shows this in action.

This shortcut option should only apply to brief social media stories. Videos or films of more substantial length greatly benefit from a professional captioning service and, lucky for you, we know a company (spoiler alert: it’s us!). NCI offers live captioning, offline captioning, automated captioning, caption integration and more! This not only paves the way for a more accessible world, but it is also the law. Please reach out to us if you have any questions regarding accessibility laws or if you’d like to book captioning for your project!

3 — Limit Excessive Emoji Use

Here we run into an issue of readability for blind users. Screen readers and accessibility apps will verbalize the name of the emoji, such as “Face Savoring Food” and “Kissing Face with Smiling Eyes.” This can be a great addition to your text, as who doesn’t love a funny emoji, but one must be careful with the quantity of use. 5 “Face Savoring Food” emojis in a row will be read out loud five times. Two full lines of the “Heart” emoji will be read out loud, you guessed it, two lines worth. This bogs down the flow of information to the end user. It is not only about blind users. Those with low-vision can often only make out emoji details when magnified on the screen through assistive technology. It’s also a great practice to never put a call to action or important information following emojis, as the user may have already skipped to the next portion to avoid a line of emojis. Definitely continue using emojis, but be mindful of accessibility and use them purposefully!

4 — Use CamelCase for #Hashtags

CamelCase is the practice of writing the first letter of each word when using compound phrases and words. Technically, CamelCase doesn’t include the first word (think: iPhone, eBay) but Upper CamelCase (example: LinkedIn) does. Why is this so important? From people with lower English-fluency, blind users with screen readers, those who are dyslexic or have cognitive impairments, or even those who are just reading in a hurry — CamelCase can benefit just about everyone when it comes to readability. Next time you use a hashtag on social media #TryItOut! We’ve very recently been reading up on CamelCase as an accessibility tool ourselves and have started incorporating it into our social media too!