You can make social media accessible by including a written description for all images and audio description and captioning for videos.
Descriptions are added with alt-text, invisible text written onto the image. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all support alt-text but they are added in different ways.
If you enable the alt-text feature on your Twitter account, you will be able to add a 420-character description to your images. (These 420 characters are separate from the 280 characters of the tweet itself.)
To enable alt-text on the Twitter app for iOS and Android devices, follow these instructions:
- Navigate to your profile screen
- Select “Settings and privacy”
- Under the “General” section, select “Accessibility”
- Under the “Vision” section, toggle on “Compose image descriptions.” You’ll now be prompted to “Add description” after uploading an image.
When posting an image, tap “edit photo” and then “add alt-text.”
When posting, go to “advanced settings” and then “Write alt-text.”
For more information on accessible social media practices, download our Accessible Social Media Guide.