These guidelines will help you avoid the most common accessibility issues on social media. If you need advice contact the Communications team.
Writing accessible social posts
- Stick to a maximum 25 words per sentence and avoid large chunks of text
- Simplify your message
- Use line breaks to create space in your social posts – spreading out your copy and making it clearer to read
- Avoid using non-standard symbols (for example mathematical symbols) as substitutes for words and messages
Emojis
- Never use emojis to communicate a core message – the ‘official’ meaning of an emoji may not match with what you are trying to convey
- Limit emojis to 2 or 3 per post
- Do not repeat the same emoji more than once
Hashtags
- Limit hashtags to two per post
- Feature hashtags at the end of the post so as not to disrupt the flow
- Use capital letters at the start of each word. For example #AccessibilityAwareness instead of #accessibilityawareness
Links
- Ensure calls to action provide a clear onward journey for example. ‘Read guidance on applying for a driving licence + link’
- Limit links to one per post
Designing and producing accessible social media assets
Accessibility, colour and contrast
- Avoid pale colours on pale or white backgrounds (and dark colours on dark backgrounds)
- Low contrast is difficult for many people to read. Use a colour contrast checker to check the contrast between your background, text and other components
- Use block colours
Accessible fonts
- Avoid using bold, italicised or complex fonts which can be difficult to read
- Minimise use of text in graphics
- Do not justify text – ensure text is left-aligned, in line with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0)
Planning accessible videos, animations and gifs
Videos should include subtitles or closed captions and a voiceover.
See the guidance for creating accessible video.
- Avoid moving images behind text which can be challenging for screen reader users
- There should be a minimum of 20db difference between background music and voiceovers on video content
- Guidance on adding captions to social media is available:
- YouTube allow you to add subtitles and captions easily for free, but should always be manually checked for errors
- YouTube subtitles are created as SubRip Subtitle (“SRT”) files. These are plain text files that show the sequential number of subtitles alongside start and end time codes. SRT files can be downloaded and used to apply subtitles to other video file types or create transcripts.
- Facebook – how do I add or remove caption to a video
- LinkedIn – adding closed captions to video
- Apply the best practice on font sizes and colour contrast described above when designing video captions
- Ensure key guidance messages are included in post copy as well as/rather than within a graphic
- Avoid sharing images of printed letters and documents
- Do not use multiple columns to share critical information in small graphics
- Avoid flashing images as that can cause seizures
- Check transition times on gifs, videos and animations to ensure the audience can follow the content
Publishing alt text
Any images should avoid containing large amounts of text, and have an alt text description added.
Keep the alt text description short and specific, and don’t include ‘image of’ or ‘picture of’. Try to imagine how you would explain the information in a picture over the phone.
Guidance on alt text is available:
- Twitter – picture descriptions
- Facebook – how do I edit alternative text
- Instagram – how do I edit alternative text on a photo
- LinkedIn – adding alternative text to images
The Government Communication Service has published useful guidance on planning, creating and publishing accessible social media campaigns.