Through the people, I have followed, I have gained and learnt new ways to make my social media page accessible, not only to disabled people, but to everyone. Here are some tricks I have learnt over the past couple years when it comes to social media when it comes to accessibility and user-friendly page.
Accessibility
I believe it’s so important to make your social media platforms as accessible as possible for your wider audience.
Image description
For those of you that don’t know what an image description is, it’s when you describe an image for someone. In this case with social media, I always make sure I have some sort of a description at the end of my posts.
There are two ways for doing this;
1. Image descriptions are found at the bottom of a person’s post or it is found within the comments once you have posted it. There is no automatic way of doing this when it comes to social media, so, you will have to physically type it into your caption.
2. Alt text, if you want to write image descriptions, but to keep it hidden make sure you use alt text. Alt text is another way of doing image descriptions, but in this case, it is only accessible for people that are blind.
Audio description
An audio description are subtitles. These can be written in your caption, or you can download an app, so you are able to add subtitles into your videos. You can find one of the apps here.
I don’t talk much on Instagram stories (which you can also link to your Facebook page or personal account), but when I do, I make sure that I type what I have said into the story as well. This is useful for not only people that are vision impaired, but also people that don’t watch Facebook or Insta stories with the sound up. (If you do this, please make sure it is big enough and not in fancy writing, so people are able to read it).
Video description
When I post a video, I always make sure I type in a video description. Through doing this, people know what the video is without watching it (similar to image descriptions, but it is for a video rather than an image).
General
Through following people on Instagram, I have learnt how to make my social media (particularly a Instagram public Profile and Facebook page) user-friendly. And what I mean by user-friendly is, everyone can understand it.
Bio
Facebook: with having a Facebook page you can put as much or as little information on the page as you want. With putting information on the about section of your Facebook page, you are allowing your audience to know who you are, or as a business prospections, what your business offers (products or services). With this you are able to put in website links as well as your other social media pages.
Instagram: Make this short, sharp and sweet. With only 15 characters (letters and spaces) to use, your about me section for this particular platform is quite limited. If the Instagram is about a person, please make sure it includes their main focus, as well as an action to your bio or contact details. For a business page make sure that you give a breif description of what your business is about, as well as a call to action for your contact details or the link in your bio.
Instagram bio: A massive disadvantage to Instagram is that you can ONLY HAVE 1 link. I would highly recommend for both a personal page and a business to have link tree, a platform which is created to be used for Instagram, and you can put multiple links on there.
Here’s an example of one, this is the one that I use click here, (for a personal account)
Instagram story highlights
Highlights can be used in your Instagram profile ONLY IF you have a IG story to use. As a personal account, I would highly recommend that you use this for your hobbies and what you’ve been up to. From a business prospection it’s about who the business is and what the business offers, as well as who to contact. By doing this your audience will know more about you or the business.
Here’s a couple of examples for you
- Personal account
- Hobbies (1 or more IG story highlights)
- Work (depending on what your account is related to i.e., blog, small business, fashion, etc.)
- Favourite holidays
- Anything else that is related to the picture that you want to get across
- Business account;
- About us
- Service or products
- Our events
- Contact
- And anything else that is related to your business
______________________________________________
Some people might be confused between the two, personal or business, and so, I’m going to show you what I mean;
- Personal account
- Writer, blogger, author
- Designer, fashion designer, model
- Artist, signer, actor
- Public figure
And anything else that does fit into this category
Business account is anything like
- Business account is anything like
- Public figure
- Business, company
- Organisation, not for-profit, non for-profit
- Brand, shop/store
As well as anything else that fits into this category
When you create your social media business page (via Instagram) you can have a view for all the categories.
Thank you so much for reading my new blog. This blog is just bits and pieces that I have learnt via Instagram and Facebook to make things easier not only for disabled people, but also the wider community. If you like this, please subscribe to my blow down below 👇🏻
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