Social Media Accessibility How Tos

General Guidelines

• Have your individual or group's contact information listed or linked to on your social media account page on each platform.
• Make your content available through multiple channels so that users can access your content on the platform that will give them the best experience.
• Keep it simple—avoid using more than three hashtags, abbreviations, or acronyms in your posts—the more straightforward the content the better for everyone.

X (FKA Twitter)

Images and video

X allows users to add up to 1000 characters of alternative text (alt text) to images and videos in posts.

Do you need help writing your alt text? X provides tips on how to write great image descriptions.

Links

• Make sure you are linking to accessible content. If you cannot find a suitable replacement for the content that is accessible, you should identify the accessibility barriers in your Tweet.
• Use a link shortener, like UD’s own uLink, if you are sharing a link that is long (as screen readers will read every character).
• If you are sharing links to images or videos, identify the type of content in your post. For example: "#BlueHens share their experiences #StudyingAbroad in Russia this summer. [VIDEO] https://youtu.be/snpBGLqKH_4"

Text

• Avoid using unfamiliar acronyms that would sound strange if read by a screen reader. If you are using an acronym spell it out in the first instance.
• Use camel case for multiple words within a hashtag (e.g., use #UDel not #udel)

Facebook

Facebook has a repository of information regarding accessibility on its website. We encourage everyone to browse through the information on the site to better understand the Facebook experience for users with disabilities. 

To get you started we’ve captured some of the major points below.

Images

Facebook uses automatic alternative text (alt text) to provide a visual description of a photo through object recognition technology. You can replace this text and provide a better description by following these steps. 

Video

Any video you create and share should be captioned. While Facebook will automatically caption videos uploaded to the platform, they will need to be checked for accuracy and may need to be edited. 

Don't want to use Facebook's automatted captions? Here’s how to manually add captions to the videos you share on Facebook.

Text

• Avoid using unfamiliar acronyms that would sound strange if read by a screen reader. If you use an acronym, spell it out in the first instance, followed by the acronym in parenthesis. For example: Office of Communication and Marketing (OCM). Then, you can use the acronym OCM by itself as a reference throughout the remaining text. You should only put the acronym in parenthesis in the initial reference.
• Use camel case for multiple words within a hashtag (e.g., use #UDel not #udel).

YouTube

YouTube works well with many accessibility tools. Ensure your content reaches all of your audience by following these guidelines.

Video

• Any video you create and share should be captioned. YouTube offers automatic video captioning for videos less than 10 minutes long. Automatic captioning is helpful but you should edit the file YouTube creates to ensure the accuracy of the content (this is especially true with videos that use technical language).
  • Good captions are not just a transcript of what is said in the video. It is also important to describe sounds, particularly sounds for which there is no visual equivalent (e.g., off-screen noises like laughter from a crowd). Tone of voice is also important to note (e.g., jokingly, exclamation, sarcasm). It is helpful to describe the background music as well as that can change how the textual information is received.
• Provide a link to a full transcript of the video in the caption of your video.

Caption and transcript text

• Avoid using unfamiliar acronyms that would sound strange if read by a screen reader. If you use an acronym, spell it out in the first instance.
• Use camel case for multiple words within a hashtag (e.g., use #UDel not #udel).

Instagram

Instagram works with several accessibility tools and has several features enabled for those using assistive technology—below lists a few ways you can support those features through your content.

Learn more about the accessibility features and technologies available on Instagram.

Images and video

• Like Facebook, Instagram uses automatic alternative text (alt text) to provide a visual description of a photo through object recognition technology. You can replace this text and provide a better description by following these steps. 
• Instagram does not currently allow you to upload caption files for videos, however, there is an option to enable automatic captions. This feature is currently only available on mobile devices.