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University accessibility University accessibility

Using social media effectively

Expanding university content beyond the wayne.edu websites means we are responsible for making it visible and usable by the greatest number of people.

Although we cannot control our content on these platforms, or their capabilities, we will do our best to ensure we are utilizing as many accessibility features as possible.

Our social media course in Canvas is filled with specific information on how accessibility works on commonly used platforms at WSU, such as Twitter/X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. 

Quick tips

  • A message should be composed in machine-readable text whenever possible, an image containing the main message should be avoided at all costs.
  • All text should be written in Plain Language. A resource of guidelines is available for review.
  • All images should contain alt text that gets the point of the image across to a non-sighted user (and search engine). Imagine closing your eyes and only hearing the alt text, does it accurately describe what we are trying to get across with the image?
  • All GIFs should have alt text in the same way as a static image would. If the platform does not support alt text on GIFs, add "[gif: alt text here]" to the body of the message
  • All videos must include captions of the spoken audio and text on the screen. This ensures both non-sighted users, users who have their phone on mute (or in a location where audio would be inappropriate) and anyone who would benefit from the automated translation of the captions.
  • Live video should include live closed captioning (CART) support if possible. This works best on YouTube since the captioning service can plug right into the native captioning.
  • Hashtags should always be in CamelCaps so they are easier to read and screenreaders will read concatenated words as separate words instead of trying to sound out a single word.
  • Emojis displayed on a screen will be described by a screen reader. The 👏 emoji, for example, will be read aloud as “clapping hands.” But the “shruggie” ¯_(ツ)_/¯ will be read aloud by a screen reader as: “Macron, backslash, underline, katakana, underline, slash, macron.”

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