Making charities’ social media content accessible by all
Over the past three years, the charity sector has seen widespread digital adoption, with the vast majority of charities believing that the pandemic has directly led to the need for a digital presence.
Social media can be an integral part of a charity’s online digital presence and has become an indispensable tool for charities to connect with their audiences, amplify their impact and collect donations.
Most charities are confident with their social media skills. However, without addressing some considerations relating to inclusive practices, organisations could be excluding a significant proportion of their intended audience and creating barriers for users trying to access important information.
Improving their online and social media presence is the number one digital priority for charities, yet 22% of them believe their own digital accessibility skills to be poor. Meeting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is a legal requirement for public sector organisations, and in some cases within the charity sector too.
However, there is no current requirement for social media to also meet any defined accessibility criteria. With one in six people worldwide identifying as disabled, making sure everyone can access a charity’s online resources and communications is essential.
There are 16 million disabled people in the UK, and that encompasses a whole range of access needs, for example, those who use reading glasses to those who are registered blind.
Enhanced accessibility also doesn’t only help those with disabilities either. Anybody can benefit from more accessible content. Ensuring inclusive practices are embedded in an organisation requires training and investment, but there are plenty of immediate changes that charities can implement to make their social media presence more inclusive.
As a significant channel of communication, it’s important that marketing teams make reasonable adjustments to their content to ensure that it is accessible to all.
Making images accessible
Images play a crucial role in social media content – 71% of Facebook posts are image based. Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram encourage users to share visual content, so it is important that content creators make the necessary adjustments to make sure their posts are accessible.
For individuals using screen readers, alternative text descriptions, also known as alt-text, are vital. Alt-text is a short-written description that is read out by a screen reader, enabling individuals who are visually impaired to understand the image’s content. By providing accurate and descriptive alt-text, charities ensure that all users can engage with and understand the visual elements of their content.
When writing alt-text, following simple guidelines can help ensure that descriptions are effective. Descriptions should detail what is seen in the image in a logical order, including colours, shapes, sizes, emotions, actions or interactions. It is important to be specific and accurate while avoiding unnecessary or subjective comments. Keep it simple – aim for a maximum of 125 characters and prioritise accuracy over brevity.
Typography and font considerations
Choosing the right font style and size is essential for ensuring legibility neurodiverse or visually impaired users. Sans serif fonts like Arial, Calibri, or Helvetica, are easier to read than serif fonts such as Times New Roman or Georgia because of their clean and simple design. Using a minimum font size of 12 points for body text and larger font sizes for headings improves readability for users.
Marketing teams should avoid using images of text as they cannot be resized or read by screen readers. It’s also best to refrain from unnecessary justification and text alignment as it creates uneven spaces between words and makes it difficult for users with visual impairments to follow.
Colour contrast
Colour blindness affects 140 million people worldwide, (equal to the population of the USA). To ensure that visually impaired users can access content effectively, charities should prioritise adequate colour contrast.
Implementing high contrast between foreground and background colours significantly improves readability. Best practice is to use a background colour that contrasts well with the text colour. WCAG informs best practice around this, offering guidance around contrast ratio at different levels, because creating more accessible content isn’t always as simple as layering contrasting colours over each other. There are also a number of free tools available to test your own website, including the WebAIM Contrast Checker.
Sticking to block colours instead of gradients or patterns enhances visibility, making it easier for users to distinguish between different elements. Marketing teams should not use colour to convey meaning or urgency. Instead, being explicit with copy is the best way to ensure users can understand the message.
Adding captions and transcripts
Charities, and those producing content for them, must ensure that audio and video content is universally accessible. Providing captions and transcripts is essential. Captions enable deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences to understand spoken dialogue and audio cues, but they’re also increasingly used by many users to enhance the experience. Ensuring accurate and synchronised captions is crucial to keeping content accessible to all.
Various social media platforms have automatic features for captioning. However, it is always worth checking these captions for accuracy, so any text adjustments can be made. With tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) being readily available now, the process of generating captions and transcripts can be streamlined, making it more efficient for charities to reach a broader audience. But AI tools cannot be solely relied on – content still requires a human touch to review.
Optimising audio and video quality
Charities content and marketing teams should optimise the quality of their audio and video content to enhance accessibility too. Adequate volume and clarity of speech are crucial for individuals with hearing impairments, and minimising background noise and distractions improves the listening experience.
Try using a clip-on lapel microphone in addition to camera or smartphone footage to enhance audio quality. They’re inexpensive and are compatible with most technologies. Additionally, offering visual cues and sign language interpretation, when feasible, further promotes inclusivity. Incorporating warnings for flashing images helps users with photosensitivity navigate content safely.
Inclusive content in meme culture
Memes (text or visual statements copied with variations and spreading) have become a powerful and popular form of communication on social media platforms. Charities can hop on board with meme trends to engage with their audience – if appropriate – but it is crucial to ensure that meme-based content remains accessible to all users. Text-based meme formats are often difficult to interpret by screen readers. Like imagery, providing alt-text allows all users to enjoy and engage with funny content.
While memes often rely on visual elements, charities can explore creative approaches such as text-based posts or audio descriptions accompanying the memes. This way, users with visual impairments or those who cannot view images can still engage with the content and understand the intended message.
Emojis in moderation
Emojis have become ingrained into how people communicate online, adding emotion and context into text-based content. However, excessive, and repetitive use of emojis can hinder accessibility for those using tools like screen readers. Charities should exercise moderation and strategic use of emojis to maintain clarity and inclusivity.
Embedding emojis within a sentence or having several emojis one after the other can also be troublesome for screen readers. Charities should use emojis purposefully and sparingly, putting them at the end of sentences – two is plenty.
Placing a call to action before emojis is crucial for seamless user experience, allowing individuals using assistive technologies to understand the intended action before encountering a string of emojis. By structuring the content in a logical order, charities can ensure that the message is effectively conveyed.
Incorporating accessibility best practices
While it may now feel like there’s a lot to think about when crafting social media content, the most important thing is awareness. By making a conscious effort to include people with different types of access needs, charities can take steps to embed accessibility into their practices and help it become second nature.
To maintain the highest standards, regular accessibility audits and user testing is the best option to identify potential barriers and help charities continuously improve their digital content.
There is a lot of room for improvement, particularly in increasing diversity within product teams and amongst the users that charities conduct research with, as well as monitoring the accessibility of their users.
Better set of insights
Involving more of the people you’re trying to reach in the creation process means you’ll get a better set of insights on how users might access and interact with content before creating and sharing it. But one in four charities say that they currently do not have any of these things in place.
The charity sector has a duty to ensure its digital presence and communications are accessible to all users. Ensuring social media content is inclusive and taking measures to address barriers to access is a core part of ensuring this is the case.
