How To Optimize Your Visually Impaired Social Posts
Do you want to consume your social media content to a wider audience? Wondering how to create content that is more accessible for people with impairments? Within this post, you’ll find 3 Ben Givon’s tips and tools for making your content on social media available to everyone.
Online accessibility is a dynamic patchwork of website architecture, browser functionality, accessibility tools and yes, the ways in which content is accessed by individual users. By adding only a few rules and techniques to your social media posts you can make a difference in terms of accessibility.
The good thing is that some of the research for you is already completed on social media. Platforms like LinkedIn , Facebook and Twitter have begun to add more accessibility tools to make text, photos and video easier to access. While on those platforms, you don’t have to worry about developer specifics, such as whether the page navigation is correctly marked up.
Here’s what you need to worry about: Media and content design also affect accessibility, sometimes in quite unexpected ways. Unless you never had to worry about usability before, there may be some really simple solutions that you lack. In this article we outlined some basic tips and resources for posting usable text, photos , video and social media links.
1.Make accessible Text
We prefer to think of social media today as photographs and videos but it all began with text. Here are a couple of ways you could exchange text on social media:Facebook page updates, Tweets, Text in Instagram or Facebook Stories, LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn articles, Comments on Facebook or Instagram posts, Twitter replies, Direct messages and Profile bios.
Every time you share a piece of writing online, there are two ways you need to think about its accessibility. First, is the text visually approachable?can people see it? It’s more difficult to read text that’s in an unusual font, very small, or in a color too close to the background color. And second, is it easy to read? There is a reason why most social networks tend to use a sans-serif font. Generally they are easier to read. If you choose to use non-standard fonts or characters, copy text from a converter and paste it.
You can still use emojis, of course. Just make sure you don’t use them as a substitute for key words.
Finally, don’t lose sight of the most basic copywriting rule: Keep it simple. In fact, short text posts can be harder to write than long articles because you have to pack so much into just a few characters.
2.Make Accessible Images
We ‘re always told it’s visual on social media. Many of its content, interactions, and attractions revolve around videos, infographics, pictures, and memes. But if you’re a person you can’t see, or you can’t see very well, that’s not ideal.
Whenever you share an image on social media, make sure it’s easy to see and understand, and for people who can’t see the image, there’s an alternative medium.
A free Website called Who Can Use is the favorite tool for this. In any mix of colors you can add in the hex numbers and the website can show you how it looks in people with various visual impairments. This even gives you the amount of population per disability. You can be shocked by how many people lack Technicolor 20/20 vision.
Another valuable resource is Color Safe. It is yet another free program with a similar approach. You tell the app about your background color, font size and a few other design details and it suggests color combinations that can be accessed.
Next let ‘s discuss alternative media. If anyone can not see an image, they should be able to access the information that they carry in a different way. Therefore we have the alt text.Alt text can now be added to images on Twitter , LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. (LinkedIn and Facebook even have tools that generate alt text automatically if you forget but prefer to write it yourself).
3.Create Accessible Video
Video is where accessibility really starts to lag behind on social media. If you’re a sighted and hearing person, video seems so intuitive; communicating is an easy way. You just whack and do your thing on the camera phone. Simple, right?
But if you can’t hear very well or have trouble viewing, then videos are a nightmare. They move too quickly. You can not see the essential information, or hear it. There are background music and visual effects which keep you distracted.
Video can still be a fantastic tool, when it’s done right. But you have to think in terms of accessibility.
The fundamental rules should be clear: good lighting, clear angles and not too much background clutter. Try to avoid shaky camerawork or many overlaid effects unless they are for a clear purpose. Add a alert in the video, title, and description if you want to use strobe effects or something similar.
When you have a talk head picture, make it available to people dependent on lip-reading. Make sure that the person speaking faces the camera, and that their face is well-lit. Ask them to speak at a normal pace, naturally, and without exaggerated facial movements.
Let’s then think about the sound. If you are planning to use background music as well as speech, make sure that the sound is mixed correctly so that speech is clearly spoken through. Any kind of percussive background noise like construction, street traffic, or other behind-the-speaker conversations will make it difficult for people with hearing impairments to separate important sounds.
And, you have to have subtitles, of course. There’s plenty of free subtitling and automatic captioning tools out there. Facebook and YouTube provide auto-generated captions that are helpful but not always accurate in a pinch.
We all have a responsibility to learn, promote and demand accessibility where it’s missing. I hope this Ben Givon’s article contains some ideas that will help you create more open content. Note, you needn’t be an instant expert; you just need to make an effort. It could make you followers all the difference.
