How Does Accessibility Influence Social Media Design Decisions?
In the realm of social media, design choices can be pivotal in fostering inclusivity and reaching a broader audience. We’ve gathered insights from CEOs to Marketing Consultants, distilling their wisdom into sixteen key perspectives on how accessibility principles like alt text and color contrast can shape your digital presence. From the importance of designing with accessibility as a default to adopting accessibility principles to ensure inclusive social media, explore how these experts suggest businesses can integrate inclusivity into their social media design.
How Does Accessibility Influence Social Media Design Decisions?
On the whole, it actually doesn’t impact social media design decisions as much as you’d think, so long as you make designing with accessibility in mind the default, rather than the exception. Any trained designer will tell you the same thing, but ensuring appropriate color contrast for low-visibility users and other very common accessibility design practices aren’t actually that much more work upfront—it’s going back and fixing designs that weren’t made with these principles in mind where the real issue comes in.
Not every brand easily fits itself to this design practice, and making adjustments to the overall branding to have a more inclusive aesthetic moving forward can be tricky, though ultimately still worth doing as it keeps you in line with design best practices and enhances your brand perception.
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Accessible Content Boosts Reach and Compliance
Rick C., Licensed Paralegal & Legal Assistant | Marketing Expert, Kahlon Law
Ensuring social media content is accessible involves nuanced decisions that reflect both legal and practical considerations. Providing alt text for images, for instance, not only complies with accessibility guidelines but also opens up content to visually impaired users, enhancing audience reach. Color contrast is critical as it ensures readability for users with visual impairments, supporting an inclusive user experience.
My experience in the legal domain suggests proactively incorporating accessibility features aligns with anti-discrimination laws, fostering both ethical engagement and legal compliance. Additionally, involving diverse teams in the design process can generate a comprehensive perspective on inclusivity needs. Accessibility in social media isn’t just an obligation but a commitment to creating an equitable digital environment.
Considering accessibility principles forces a design shift toward simplicity and clarity, which is actually beneficial for all users. Accessibility isn’t just about accommodating disabilities—it’s about making sure your message is clear, whether someone is using a screen reader or scrolling quickly through their feed. Designing with accessibility in mind often leads to better, more straightforward communication. When we do this at our organization, the end result is content that cuts through the noise and gets right to the point, which everyone appreciates.
Use inclusive visuals that represent diversity in race, gender, ability, and age, so all users feel represented in your brand. While accessibility is often about functionality, inclusivity also extends to how people visually connect with your brand. We encourage clients to choose images, videos, and illustrations that reflect the diverse world we live in, which helps build trust and relatability. This approach ensures that inclusivity is not just functional but also emotional, creating deeper connections with your audience.
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Accessibility Spurs Innovation and Usability
Austin Benton, Marketing Consultant, Gotham Artists
Think of accessibility as an innovation driver, not just a compliance box to check. When you design for accessibility, you’re forced to simplify, clarify, and be intentional with your content, which naturally improves usability for everyone, not just those with disabilities.
Imagine having a design that looks just as good when spoken out loud through a screen reader or when viewed in black-and-white mode.
To ensure inclusivity, flip your workflow—test your designs first with accessibility tools before anything else. This not only guarantees inclusivity but also sparks fresh design ideas that traditional processes might never inspire.
Accessibility should be top-of-mind for every marketer from the start of the planning process. Just as most brands have adapted from mobile-friendly to mobile-first web design, we must also be accessibility-first—inclusive design shouldn’t be an afterthought or a checklist to follow. We must understand accessibility and design social media content around it through diverse teams that include people with disabilities. We must also have ongoing training to keep teams up-to-date with evolving accessibility standards and create strong feedback mechanisms to regularly hear how users with disabilities are experiencing our content.
As an accessibility expert who has worked on countless AA and AAA projects, I believe many companies are overlooking accessibility. This is probably not intentional, as the cost of making a social media design accessible is negligible (literally $0). Nevertheless, it is something that must be addressed.
The benefits of inclusive design can be significant, both directly and indirectly. Directly, because more users will be able to engage with what the company is trying to communicate. And let’s be clear: many companies get “scared” because they think they need to design for blind users, which is, of course, very challenging, especially when the company doesn’t control the platform (the social media outlet itself).
However, inclusive design and accessibility also benefit people with poor vision, color blindness, dyslexia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and more. In numbers, we’re talking at least 10% of the target audience, and any marketing director will know that 10% of a target audience is substantial.
There are also indirect benefits: people with disabilities will become more loyal customers simply because they can interact with the company—something that may not happen when they try to engage with other companies. They will amplify the message by recommending it to other people with disabilities, as well as to their families and friends, who may or may not have disabilities, but usually lean towards any person, company, service, or experience that values inclusion.
In short, companies can leverage emotional design strategies by simply incorporating basic accessibility guidelines: color contrast, font size and weight, alt text that accurately describes images, clearly defined hierarchies, and so on.
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Thoughtful Accessibility Engages Wider Audiences
Chris Aubeeluck, Head of Sales and Marketing, Osbornes Law
Content designed with accessibility in mind often requires deeper consideration, resulting in more thoughtful and engaging posts. This process forces creators to break down complex ideas into simpler, more digestible pieces, improving overall clarity.
As they consider how different users will engage with the content, from text to visuals, the result is posts that are more intentional and impactful. The added focus on accessibility often leads to improved organization and flow, making the content more engaging for all users.
In the end, designing with accessibility improves the depth and quality of content, making it more accessible to a wider audience.
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Evgen Tymoshenko, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Skylum, Skylum
As a business that is centered around visuals, it is important for us to be inclusive. We provide alt text for all of our main visuals. For example, we include alt text for our product when we introduce new features or show photo transformations. Of course, we also implement contrast for texts, so that it’s easily readable by all our users.
My advice on how to ensure inclusivity of your business is simple: listen to your customers. It is crucial to stay connected with your audience and take into account the issues that they point out. Some users even give you ideas about how you can improve, all you have to do is listen.
It is also always good to educate your team. We hold webinars about the most recent trends in inclusivity measures and try to have meetings about the importance of being inclusive and what more we can do to make sure all our clients feel comfortable using our product.
Including accessibility ideas in social media design often sparks creative ideas for content strategies. Tasked with making their posts accessible, designers and content creators are driven to think outside the box and produce more creative and inclusive ideas.
For visual cues, for example, using emojis has become rather common. These little, vibrant icons can be fast, universal markers of tone or content, so helping not only people with visual disabilities but also those who more effectively absorb knowledge using visual means.
Comparably, the development of descriptive hashtags has turned out as another creative idea. Companies are now creating more thorough, context-rich tags that give clearer information about the content of the post instead of flimsy or trendy hashtags. This benefits all users’ searchability and content categorizing in addition to helping screen readers.
Businesses that want to make sure their design approach is inclusive must adopt a mindset of constant iteration and improvement. This strategy understands that accessibility and inclusivity are not fixed goals that can only be reached once. Instead, they are ongoing processes that need to be constantly improved and paid attention to. What was once thought to be accessible may become out-of-date or not enough as technology changes and user needs shift.
Businesses can stay ahead of these changes and always provide welcoming experiences by seeing accessibility as an ongoing journey. With this method, feedback is regularly gathered from a wide range of user groups, such as those with different disabilities or accessibility needs. It also means keeping up with the newest guidelines and technologies for accessibility and being ready to change designs to fit them.
Companies could do regular accessibility audits and user testing with people who use assistive technologies or hire accessibility experts to help them out on a regular basis. This iterative process not only makes things better for disabled users, but it also often leads to new ideas that help everyone. It also shows that a company cares about being open to everyone, which could improve the brand’s reputation and user loyalty.
Businesses can ensure inclusivity in their design approaches by incorporating assistive technology integration. Such features can help visually impaired people access content on social media. For instance, brands can make social media content compatible with screen readers, like VoiceOver, NVDA, and JAWS. These screen readers will convert visual content and text into Braille or speech. Thanks to this, visually impaired people can enjoy the content effortlessly. Also, they will feel empowered to interact with the content.
As brands integrate assistive technology to promote inclusivity, they will develop a good reputation. Clients or customers will respect the brands and start using their products or services. Furthermore, this initiative can attract the attention of renowned media sites, leading to features mentioning their brands.
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Adopt Accessibility-First Design Mindset
Dilkash Shaikh, Digital Marketing Manager, Fascinating Diamonds
Accessibility principles impact our social media design guidelines and the way we create content. Here are the ways they have influenced our social media design style:
- Training our creators to write descriptive image alt-text.
- Choosing color palettes that meet WCAG 2.1 contrast guidelines (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text).
- Checking color combinations using tools like WebAIM’s Contrast Checker.
- Adding text descriptions for non-text content to ensure screen readers can understand each element of the content.
- Selecting font families with high readability scores, such as sans-serif.
If a business wants to ensure inclusivity on its online channels, such as websites and social media content, it is recommended to start by adopting an “accessibility-first” mindset. This means considering accessibility from the beginning of the design process and including diverse groups in testing and feedback.
Another way to ensure content meets current accessibility standards is by regularly auditing it and providing contact information for accessibility-related inquiries.
As the visual designer leading marketing a women-of-color-owned design studio, I’ve made accessibility and inclusivity the north star of our social media designs.
In my experience, thoughtful alt-text isn’t just about description; it’s an opportunity to extend our storytelling to every user. Similarly, our obsession with color contrast goes beyond aesthetics—it ensures our scroll-stopping content is truly accessible to all. These elements aren’t just boxes to tick; they’re powerful tools that have consistently boosted our clients’ engagement across diverse audiences.
Our inclusive approach has led to some of our most innovative campaigns. Prioritizing accessibility is a win-win that proves inclusive design is both a moral imperative and a smart business strategy. For businesses looking to ensure inclusivity in their design approach, I recommend starting with diverse teams and user testing groups—after all, the best way to design for everyone is to include everyone in the process.
When it comes to ensuring inclusivity in social media design, adding captions to videos is a must. This simple feature can make a big difference to those who are hard of hearing or prefer to watch videos with the sound off. In fact, according to some studies, up to 85% of videos on Facebook are watched without sound. Therefore, not only does including captions on your videos adhere to accessibility principles, but it also broadens your audience.
Additionally, captions enhance the viewing experience for all users by providing clarity and context. So, make sure to always include clear and accurate captions on your videos. Remember, making your content accessible to all users is not just good practice; it’s also a smart business move.
It can have a huge positive impact not only on the accessibility of your social media output but also on broader SEO and website usability implications when carried across all the online platforms you’re utilizing (especially your website).
Consider how screen readers interact with your media (via optimized and contextual alt texts), and track the bounce rates via A/B testing of text that is and isn’t against a contrasting background. You’ll quickly get the data to justify the best approach from an accessibility standpoint!
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Design for Accessibility, Gain Loyal Audience
John Cox, Online Marketing + Creative Services Consultant, Bonhomie Creative
Did you know that 1 in 4 Americans live with some form of disability? That’s a massive chunk of your potential audience you could be missing out on if your social media content isn’t designed with accessibility in mind.
When you design with accessibility at the forefront, you’re not just checking a box—you’re opening your brand to a wider, more engaged audience. Simple tweaks like adding alt text to images, including image descriptions at the bottom of captions, and ensuring strong color contrast for text help make your content more digestible and inclusive for all users, including those with visual impairments. And by following accessibility best practices, brands usually enjoy SEO benefits, as well!
Inclusivity builds trust and rapport with your audience. Imagine the impact of showing your customers you care about their experience, regardless of their abilities. It’s not just good design—it’s good business. Plus, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn already provide tools to make this easier, so there’s no reason not to prioritize accessibility.
Want to make sure your social media designs hit the mark? Start by testing your color contrasts on websites like Utah State University’s WebAIM color contrast checker. Add descriptive alt text to uploaded social media images. The effort is minimal, but the reward? A more inclusive and loyal audience that knows you’re committed to their experience.
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Accessibility Principles Ensure Inclusive Social Media
Audrey Cahais, Digital Accessibility, CDP Communications
Considering accessibility principles like alt text for images and color contrast for text is crucial in social media design. These features ensure content is inclusive and usable for people with disabilities, providing equal access to digital information.
- Alt Text for Images: Alt text is essential for users with visual impairments who rely on screen readers. Social media platforms allow alt text to describe images. Including descriptive alt text ensures that everyone can engage with visual content they can’t see.
- Color Contrast for Text: Adequate contrast is vital for readability, especially for users with low vision or color blindness. WCAG guidelines recommend a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for text to ensure legibility. Poor contrast makes content hard to read, reducing engagement.
- Keyboard Navigation: Many users with disabilities rely on keyboard navigation. Ensuring buttons, links, and other interactive elements are fully accessible by keyboard lets users effectively interact with social media content.
Ensuring Inclusivity:
- Adhering to Standards: Following WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and PDF/UA (PDF for Universal Accessibility) helps businesses make content accessible. WCAG applies to web content, while PDF/UA ensures shared documents (e.g., PDFs) are accessible.
- Hiring People with Lived Experience: Involving people with disabilities in content creation brings valuable insights. Their input helps businesses identify accessibility challenges and create more authentic design solutions.
- Testing with Assistive Technologies: Testing content with screen readers and keyboard-only navigation helps identify accessibility barriers, ensuring all users can interact fully with the content.
- Training: Educating content creators on accessibility ensures inclusivity becomes part of the design process. Understanding how users interact with content allows for more accessible experiences.
Accessible social media content reaches a wider audience, including people with disabilities. It boosts SEO, improves discoverability, and enhances brand reputation by promoting inclusivity. Compliance with ADA and AODA standards helps avoid legal risks.
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