Accessibility is the practice of making your business usable for as many people as possible, specifically by making your website and social media easier to use and more inclusive.

To prevent losing customers online and cause detriment to your business, it’s incredibly important to make your website and social media page more accessible. This allows your followers and specific people to view your products and services.

In this article, we’re going to run through 8 ways that you can improve your accessibility both on your website and social media accounts.

8 Ways You Can Improve Your Accessibility

1. Use Plain Text

Using plain text (text that’s written in plain English, not using overly complicated text or jargon, and not containing hidden content), allows your audience to understand what you’re trying to convey easily. This is especially important for people that use assistive technology such as screen readers because they read in plain text and can’t pick up hidden content, as well as those that are not native speakers of the language that you are writing in.

2. Use Alternative Text

Alternative text allows you to describe the images to your site and social media visitors that are unable to see, allowing those who use screen readers to understand what the visual content is.

You can add alternative text to Instagram posts by creating your post and then clicking on ‘Advanced Settings’ and ‘Alt text’ at the editing stage before posting. You can also add Alt Text on website images, with most website providers offering Alt Text when you upload an image.

3. Utilize The New Instagram Captions Sticker In Stories/Add Subtitles To Videos

After years of waiting, Instagram has recently created the ‘Instagram Captions Sticker’ feature that allows you to add captions to Stories where you are speaking. This allows people that are hard of hearing or deaf, and those that can’t watch stories with the volume turned up to see what you’re saying.

You should follow the same plan when creating videos - always add subtitles to your videos, or add a transcript (or do both!) to make these videos more accessible.

4. Focus On Readability

Readability measures how easy content is to read and takes everything from typography to complex words into account. You need to ensure that your content has good readability, simply because otherwise your audience is going to struggle with actually reading and taking in the content that you produce.

Choose a simple font (there are simple fonts that are still aesthetically pleasing, don’t panic), use easily understandable wording, and use a good font size. Overall, as long as you focus on creating content for your audience that is quick and easy to read, as well as catchy, you will have hit the readability nail on its head!

5. Use Bold Colours, Or None

Although you might want to mix and match tonnes of crazy colours to make your content look brighter and more eye-catching, you still need to focus on the readability of the content. In addition, there are a lot of people that can’t differentiate between colour or suffer from colour vision deficiency.

Therefore, make sure you are either using only a mix of 1-2 bold, sharp colours (contrasting so that the text stands out) or simply using standard black and white.

6. Provide Multimedia Content

Different people can access different types of content, so make sure you provide multimedia content - this is also super beneficial when it comes to growing your brand reach and connecting with your audience.

Don’t just stick to copy or still image, mix it up with audio content and video content too. The more types of content you produce, the more people your content is accessible to.

7. Provide Easy Navigation

You might think that creating the craziest, most out there, interactive website is going to be a huge hit with everyone, but the truth is, no matter how cool it might be, people just want to access your site and be able to use it.

You need to create an aesthetically pleasing website that impresses your audience. You need to make sure that the navigation of the site is simple and easy for everyone. If you don’t, you could be missing out on making sales!

8. Use People-First Language

Accessibility isn’t just about what tools you utilise, it’s also about ensuring that people who need you to be accessible see that you recognize them in a polite, politically correct, and kind way.

To ensure your brand is doing this, always use people-first language! People-first language is a type of language that puts a person before their diagnosis, describing what a person "has" rather than saying what a person "is".

You’re all set to be more accessible! Just remember, your business should be striving to be accessible to all, not just some! Therefore, every part of your business should be accessible, especially when it comes to your website and social media!

If you’re struggling with social media accessibility, content creation, or you’re looking for help with your digital marketing strategy, get in touch with our team of experts!