Recently, Facebook gave out a bunch of useful tips to make your posts on its various social media platforms accessible to everyone.
Accessibility is not the only aim though. Social media posts should be easy to read and understand also. There are so many people out there who have different types of disabilities. Many of them have problems with reading, while many people suffer from eye-sight or hearing issues too. So, we should consider all these people while writing down our posts on different online forums.
The suggestions that Facebook has given are pretty direct and easy to follow. Some of these tips include the following:
One of the most important rules of writing is to use simple language and short sentences. Long sentence structure is taxing to read, while difficult vocabulary makes the post or write up very exclusive, and certainly not-easy-to-read-on-a-go for everyone. It also does not cater to masses and shuns the whole concept of making the posts widely accessible!
While using hashtags, it is better to use capital letters for each word, like #BestFriendForever, rather than keeping all the letters small like #besfriendforever.
This is called Camel Case, and, by capitalizing the first letter of each word included in the hashtag, it makes it super easy to read by people with visual impairment.
While using emojis to express your feelings, it is better to use the small built-in pictures with various expressions and ideas in your post. Sometimes people use text to create emoticons, like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ These are difficult to read and decipher by many people.
Text is hard to read when it is written on top of complex images and photographs. So, it is better to place text over a solid, high-contrast background and while you are at it, it is better to increase the contrast between your text and its background too.
By adding a brief text description for the photos you share, which is known as Alt Text, you can let your screen speak to describe your images to blind and visually impaired people. It is better to keep your alt text descriptions short and simple, like “walking through the park with my new kitten.” You can also add an image description to the caption of each photo that you share or post online.
Animated GIFs that have strong visual patterns or excessive motion like flickering, blinking and flashing can cause a lot of problems for people with cognitive and learning disabilities. Not only is it hard for them to read or understand, but it can also cause seizures for some people! So, always avoid using GIFs that flash more than three times per second and run for more than 5 seconds.
Include a good text transcript with your videos, which provides descriptions of sound effects and other noises along with references to who is speaking in the video. This is especially helpful for people with hearing loss, and for those too who are sitting in a crowded atmosphere and do not have their earphones at hand. By watching the video and reading the text, they can completely understand what you have posted.
Just like for videos, the descriptive text should be added for the audio recordings that you post online too.
Read next: You Can Now Create Facebook Posts Within The Creator Studio App
Accessibility is not the only aim though. Social media posts should be easy to read and understand also. There are so many people out there who have different types of disabilities. Many of them have problems with reading, while many people suffer from eye-sight or hearing issues too. So, we should consider all these people while writing down our posts on different online forums.
The suggestions that Facebook has given are pretty direct and easy to follow. Some of these tips include the following:
One of the most important rules of writing is to use simple language and short sentences. Long sentence structure is taxing to read, while difficult vocabulary makes the post or write up very exclusive, and certainly not-easy-to-read-on-a-go for everyone. It also does not cater to masses and shuns the whole concept of making the posts widely accessible!
While using hashtags, it is better to use capital letters for each word, like #BestFriendForever, rather than keeping all the letters small like #besfriendforever.
This is called Camel Case, and, by capitalizing the first letter of each word included in the hashtag, it makes it super easy to read by people with visual impairment.
While using emojis to express your feelings, it is better to use the small built-in pictures with various expressions and ideas in your post. Sometimes people use text to create emoticons, like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ These are difficult to read and decipher by many people.
Text is hard to read when it is written on top of complex images and photographs. So, it is better to place text over a solid, high-contrast background and while you are at it, it is better to increase the contrast between your text and its background too.
By adding a brief text description for the photos you share, which is known as Alt Text, you can let your screen speak to describe your images to blind and visually impaired people. It is better to keep your alt text descriptions short and simple, like “walking through the park with my new kitten.” You can also add an image description to the caption of each photo that you share or post online.
Animated GIFs that have strong visual patterns or excessive motion like flickering, blinking and flashing can cause a lot of problems for people with cognitive and learning disabilities. Not only is it hard for them to read or understand, but it can also cause seizures for some people! So, always avoid using GIFs that flash more than three times per second and run for more than 5 seconds.
Include a good text transcript with your videos, which provides descriptions of sound effects and other noises along with references to who is speaking in the video. This is especially helpful for people with hearing loss, and for those too who are sitting in a crowded atmosphere and do not have their earphones at hand. By watching the video and reading the text, they can completely understand what you have posted.
Just like for videos, the descriptive text should be added for the audio recordings that you post online too.
Read next: You Can Now Create Facebook Posts Within The Creator Studio App
