6 Ways to Make Your Social Media Content More Accessible
Most small businesses might assume that they can’t make their social content more accessible because they aren’t a part of the disabled community. This is the furthest thing from the truth – accessibility is everyone’s responsibility, whether they are disabled or not. At VVITCH we have made it a priority to make accessibility integral to what we represent and support as a brand, but also for our client work.
Our founder, Jen Siomacco, is a disabled person, but that doesn’t have to be the case for your small business in order to prioritize accessibility. If you want your business to be inclusive and welcoming, you have to think beyond your own identities and abilities. You also have to put action to words, and we have six ways to help you do that with your social media content.
1. Use Inclusive Language
What makes language inclusive? This can sometimes be a confusing point for many small businesses that want to be inclusive in multiple ways with their branding and business. The words we use and how we put written copy to use can be helpful or harmful depending on how thoughtful you, or your team, are about what is said.
With your social content, you can make your language inclusive by avoiding ableist language — this ensures that you aren’t excluding those in your audience who are disabled. A resource that the VVITCH team has found helpful when deciding which terms are ableist and should be avoided in our copywriting is this Language Guide, created by People with Disability Australia.
We also have established our own best practices as marketers for using inclusive language. You can read more about our thoughts on this and which methods we apply when completing client work in our post about Brand Tone and Voice: Why You Need a Guide.
2. Apply Color Contrast
You’re probably wondering, what is color contrast and how does it apply to social content? Color contrast refers to the amount of contrast between your text color and your background color. When you develop social content for your small business, your brand’s messaging can be understood through written and visual content.
If your text in a social post doesn’t have sufficient contrast some people in your audience may not be able to read the text and you could lose out on those customers. This primarily happens when you are using text overlay on images or videos for posts on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and/or TikTok.
Regardless, color contrast should be included in all of your content creation and development — no matter the social platform. Our team at VVITCH likes to use this color contrast checker to help us determine which colors work best on different backgrounds and images.
If you want to keep learning about this important area of accessibility, read more about our thoughts on how to approach color contrast.
3. Improve Captions & Transcripts
Captions aren’t only for movies or TV shows you love streaming. They’re also great for accessibility reasons, too. For those who don’t know, captions are text descriptions of the words that are said by a subject, on or off camera, in a video. The VVITCH team recently completed training with TPGi where we learned more about captions and transcriptions. These are some of the key takeaways.
With video captions for your social content, your brand will need to consider whether you need open or closed captions, as well as how impactful audio descriptions can be for your audience.
Open captions are typically embedded as a part of the video you create. This is done by adding a text sticker to the video or by adding the text using a video editing tool like CapCut. It’s recommended that open captions be used to ensure that captions consistently display for users when they’re watching a video you share on your social channels.
Closed captions require you to use separate text that is often added automatically by most social media platforms. Sometimes these captions can be uploaded separately and users can have the option to turn them off or on when they appear with a video.
But you don’t have to stop at just including captions with your video content. Audio descriptions allow your brand to provide verbal descriptions of what is happening in a video so that blind and low vision users can receive the full context of your brand’s video content.
Finally, a user might prefer to refer to a transcript, so be prepared to provide one if requested — this is most possible with social media platforms such as YouTube.
4. Include Alt-Text & Image Descriptions
Our team has been talking about and promoting alt-text for what feels like forever — see our blog post on WTF is Alt-Text. Alt-text, or alternative text, displays in the event that the image in your social content can’t be perceived by the user. This usually happens either because the image fails to load or because the user is blind or has low vision.
The most important thing to remember about alt-text is that it should describe what is happening in the image (static or moving) so that the user can still take away the key content and message. Alt-text fields are often separate fields that can be seen by search engines, but don’t display for the majority of users.
Additionally, image descriptions are often included in the caption of a post and will display for all users. This serves the same purpose as alt-text and can be read easily by screen readers, which are often used by those who might be blind or have low vision.
5. Capitalize Hashtags
On social media platforms hashtags still play an important part in helping users discover your content. Your brand likely is using a strategy for which hashtags work best for your social content, and it’s important you consider capitalizing each word in hashtags going forward. This makes it easier for users to scan the hashtag quickly and also makes it easier for screen readers to interpret the content.
6. Tell Users What to Do Next
All brands have call-to-actions throughout their marketing because it helps drive customers to a website, make a purchase, or engage with more content. When your small business guides your audience to the next step in a process that is also a matter of accessibility.
Even if it’s a step as simple as telling someone to go to the link in your brand’s bio, or inquire about a service via a form on your brand’s website, giving clear guidance ensures that all customers in your audience know how to engage with your brand.
Accessibility is here to stay!
And the sooner your small business learns to apply these methods with your social content, the better experience you’ll provide for your whole audience – not just a select few.
Ready to apply these methods but want help while doing so? Hire us for WCAG 2.1 Accessibility Consulting Services!
Learn more about our full services for all your complete small business marketing needs.
Jen Siomacco - Founder and UX Designer
Jen has worked in technology, marketing, and publishing for ten years. After years as a CX/UX designer in the corporate world, Jen co-owned an independent wedding magazine prior to starting VVITCH Digital Agency. Now, after years in both the corporate and entrepreneurial worlds, Jen is committed to helping small businesses grow into revolutionary brands.
Brittinee Phillips - Copywriter
Brittinee has worked in marketing for a little over ten years. She has a passion and talent for storytelling. Brittinee's philosophy is that storytelling is the most integral part of the consumer and product experience, which is why she makes it a focal point in her approach to product and brand messaging.
