Social Media Accessibility Guidelines

UMBC strives to make sure all of our content is accessible to any person on the web. To help ensure that your social media is accessible to all audiences, we’ve put together some tips and tools to help you get started. We’ll continue to update this website as more online capabilities develop.

Accessibility Best Practices

  • Plan for accessibility; it is easier to create content that is accessible from the start than to try to add on accessibility later.
  • Assume everyone who comes across your content on social media is learning about your department or organization for the first time. That means:
    • Make sure your bio is up-to-date with contact information and multiple ways of contacting you, including email, phone and website links.
    • If you use acronyms, make sure the meaning is clearly stated in your bio or the post where they are being used.
    • At the beginning of each semester, consider creating (or re-sharing) a post that describes your department, organization, or program, and what type of content people can expect to receive on your account.
  • Color choice is important:
    • Don’t rely solely on color to convey information;
    • When choosing text and background colors, make sure you provide enough contrast for them to be clearly readable.  Enter your font and background color into a Color Contrast Checker to verify they meet minimum accessibility requirements.
  • Avoid text-heavy images. If necessary, provide basic information in alt text description and full details in the caption or provide a link to a webpage where a text version can be read.
  • Share your content in a variety of formats across all your channels; for one person a post on Twitter might be more accessible than a video on Instagram, which might be more accessible than an image on Facebook.

Written Copy

  • Use inclusive language.
  • Use CamelCase/PascalCase when using hashtags (capitalize the first letter of each new word). This makes it easier for both screen readers and followers to accurately read the hashtag.
  • Limit emoji usage; each emoji has a specific description used by screen readers, and posts that include many emojis can be confusing or distracting.  Refer to Emojipedia for details on how each emoji is described.
  • Do not use external font generators to create styled text on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Words written in these fonts cannot be read by screen readers and many are difficult to read by visual users as well.
  • On platforms like Twitter, many memes that use ASCII art (images created through letters, numbers, and punctuation) are read by screen readers one character at a time; the images can also be distorted based on someone’s screen or font size.  If you want to participate in one of these memes, create the post as a draft, take a screenshot, and then post the image with alternative text describing it.

Images and Alternative Text

By adding alternative text (sometimes referred to as image descriptions) to images, you’re ensuring that even if a person can’t see the images, they’re able to know what’s happening in the photo. This is helpful for people who use screen readers or when images don’t load on social media.

Tips for Writing Alternative Text

  • Be descriptive, but concise. Describe the relevant parts of an image that connect it to the content of the rest of the post.
  • If your image includes any written text, it should all be included in the alternative text.
  • Your alternative text may vary based on the platform where you are posting it. For example, on Twitter and Facebook a person receives the copy of a post before the image; on Instagram, the image is displayed before the copy. Consider what context a person needs from the image for it to make sense with the copy.
  • You don’t need to start your alternative text with “Image of” or “Photo of;” that is done by the screen reader.

Each social media platform has its own method for creating/updating alternative text descriptions.

On Facebook and Instagram, alternative text can be edited or added after an image has been posted. On Twitter, only accounts subscribed to Twitter Blue can edit or add alternative text after an image has been posted.

Audio and Video

Providing captioning for videos and transcripts for audio content allows followers to engage with your content when they are unable to hear it.  While this primarily benefits people who are Deaf and hard of hearing, many hearing individuals use captions when:

  • They are in a noisy environment;
  • The audio or video is not in their native language and they want to be able to look up words and phrases;
  • They have trouble understanding audio or video content because of audio issues, the speed someone is talking, or they process information better when it is written rather than spoken.

Any scripted videos that are going to be shared on UMBC’s main social media platforms must be captioned. We would strongly recommend that you also take the steps to have your own videos captioned, even if they’re not going out on UMBC’s main channels.

You can easily caption videos through YouTube. This will allow you to share your videos on multiple platforms without individually captioning each one natively. You have the option to either upload a text file or transcribe your video. This will allow you to create an .srt file that you can use on additional social platforms if you choose to upload natively.

Most platforms that allow for short form video (like Facebook and Instagram Stories and Reels) include the ability to add auto-captions for your content within the editor when creating your video. You can edit the captions for accuracy by tapping on them before posting.

Additional instructions on adding captions on video posts by platform can be found below.

Currently Instagram does not have a way of adding captions to video feed posts within the app and they should be added before posting.

Live Video on Social Media

Currently, only YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook have native ability for automated captioning for live videos, but you need to enable that setting either on your account or for the video.

To enable captions for live video:

If you do an Instagram or Twitter live video that you want to share later, save the video to your device after posting, add captions, and re-upload it to your feed.

Additional Tools and Resources