Social media is a big part of how organisations communicate about their work.

 

We must make sure that posts are accessible so that everyone can understand them.

 

Everyone has the right to see content and understand what is being said.

Always write in plain language.

 

Where acronyms are necessary, use a hashtag so that people can click on it to find out more.

Don’t use lots of emojis.

 

A screen reader is set up to automatically read emojis out loud.

 

One emoji is fine and can communicate an emotion, but hearing the description repeated lots of times can be frustrating and tiresome.

For example, out loud it will sound like “clapping hands, clapping hands, clapping hands, clapping hands, clapping hands, clapping hands, clapping hands.”

Write your hashtags in sentence case.

 

This helps people differentiate between words. Eg. #NothingAboutUsWithoutUs rather than #NOTHINGABOUTUSWITHOUTUS

Make sure your video content has open or closed captioning.

 

It is useful for people with hearing impairments but also for everyone to understand different accents or people using assistive devices.  

Use image descriptions/alt-text.

 

This means that screen-readers can describe an image for an individual who is blind.