Accessibility is critical across all your digital channels, not just your website, or your apps, but also on your social media channels. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn are now an important place for organisations to interact with customers and disseminate information.

In a recent article we looked at various tips to improve the accessibility of Twitter; now we’re going to turn our attention to Facebook, perhaps the most popular social media platform of them all.

General tips for improving accessibility of social media channels

In our Twitter article we covered six tips to improve accessibility, but actually, these also apply to Facebook and other social media channels.

Tip #1: Place accessibility into your social media governance. Most organisations have quite well-developed processes in place to reduce risk on social media channels. Make sure you wrap accessibility into these governance processes too.

Tip #2: Decide the channels in scope. Sometimes there is a blur between what is a “corporate” social media account and one that is personal, for example your CEO’s Twitter account. For clarity, decide which channels are in scope for any accessibility initiative.

Tip #3: Get the basics right on hashtags and alt text. Most social platforms have a way to provide alt text for images. You should also ensure hashtags use capitals for each new word in the hashtag to support assistive technologies.

Tip #4: Be mindful of the media assets you share.Social media involves sharing images and videos. Be mindful of the accessibility of these assets including colour contrasts and avoiding flashing images.

Tip #5:  Link to the pages that are accessible.Where possible, when you are linking to other pages and sites, makes sure these pages that are accessible.

Tip #6: Be careful of what you share and like. Always take care of sharing and liking anything that undermines your commitments to accessibility.

Six tips for improving accessibility on Facebook

Here are some further tips for further improving accessibility on your Facebook channels.

1. Review Facebook’s own advice

   Facebook itself has some helpful advice on improving accessibility. Whilst much of this is aimed at the user’s own settings, it is still a good idea to review this regularly as it includes information on alt text, adding captions and more to your own page. It also contains useful information if you get specific comments from users about the accessibility of your Facebook presence and you need to make an informed response.

2. Don’t forget Workplace from Facebook

   For most organisations, Facebook is used as another external-facing channel. However, there are a number who also use the “Workplace” product as an internal social network for employees. This leverages the same technology and tools as Facebook but is actually a separate platform. However, if your organisation does use Workplace make sure that you work to make this more accessible too.

3. Always use captioning on video

   Facebook is a great medium to share videos; it is easy to upload the format, is popular with users and also works very well on the Facebook app. Where you can, try to ensure there is captioning on your video. Here there are choices to use auto-generated captioning or captions that you write yourself. This can be done at the time of submission or retrospectively. Similarly, try also to provide text for audio recordings.  

4. Be wary about live streaming

   One of the most powerful capabilities of video on Facebook is the option to live stream through the “Facebook Live” capability, providing a real-time broadcast through a camera or a mobile device. Although it is technically possible to add close captioning to a live broadcast (this may involve a third-party provider), realistically a live stream may be less accessible than other videos. If you do live stream and are then providing access to the recording, do make sure that you add captioning at this stage.

5. Always review auto-generated alt text

   Facebook has a facility to add auto-generated alt text to pictures. If you are using this facility across your Facebook accounts always make sure that review and then change the text if necessary, otherwise any alt text may simply not be accurate.

6. Be sensible with your emojis

   Emojis are common on social media, including Facebook Screen readers are quite literal with emojis so it will tell a user there is a “Smiling face” or an “Angry face”. On Facebook it is very tempting to add multiple emojis to a post. However, this does not play out so well on a screen reader which will announce every emoji on a post. Be sensible with emojis to ensure those with assistive technologies get a good experience.

Taking care of content quality and brand compliance

Accessibility is not the only aspect of Facebook that needs to be managed. Items such as content quality, internal brand compliance and even regulatory compliance can also be critical. Here various governance processes including reviews can be important but do have their challenges because of the speed of response required across social media. Here an automated assessment tool like like Sitemorse’s SOCIALQA that scans for issues and more can deliver real value.

The ability to record Facebook channels in a fully searchable archive also has multiple benefits, including the ability to identify risky and non-compliant content retrospectively and act as a reference point for social media training.

Improving accessibility on Facebook

The accessibility of all social media channels is important, including Facebook. We hope you found these tips useful in helping to improve accessibility on your Facebook accounts and across your entire digital estate.