Make Access A Practice: Tips to Make Your Campaign Training Recruitment Accessible
Are you one of the many campaign training programs that are equipping future campaign staff, candidates, and organizers with the skills they need to succeed in the political arena? Among the leaders you’re training are countless disabled people who are eager to learn and grow their skills. However, disabled people face access barriers that make it more challenging and even impossible to participate in, apply for, or even learn about these programs.
Luckily, there are many simple actions you can take to incorporate accessibility and disability inclusion into your work. Over the next few weeks, we are going to highlight some of our top tips for making your campaign training recruitment process more accessible. These actions only take a few minutes to learn and they are easy to implement.
However, consistency is key. Make access a practice. Accessibility is not a one-time action, but a practice that you should incorporate into your organization’s culture. These tips are a starting point for making your recruitment more accessible, but there’s so much more to learn about incorporating accessibility throughout your communications, operations, and programming. If you’d like to learn more about how to make your programs accessible and inclusive, or you are interested in scheduling a training session with us, contact us at hello@disabilityvictory.org.
Tip #1: Use alternative text on your graphics
Are you using a graphic to advertise your program announcements, application process, or training dates? Are you sharing pictures from current or past training programs? Make sure to use alt text to make those visuals accessible!
Alternative text, or “alt text,” is a text description of the appearance of an image. Alt text provides vital information for people who are blind or who have low vision and who use an assistive technology called a screen reader. If an image doesn’t have alt text, a screen reader user can’t read the information in your graphic.
Over 7 million Americans reported having a visual disability in 2016. Many people who are blind or have low vision use screen readers to navigate the web and read content. Screen reader software reads the text that is displayed on the computer screen to the screen reader user through audio or a braille display.
What should alt text include?
Let’s look at an example: the graphic for this article.
Here is the alt text we wrote for this graphic: “#MakeAccessAPractice. Tips to Make Your Campaign Training Recruitment Accessible. Tip #1: Add alternative text to your graphics and images. Learn: disabilityvictory.org/resources.”
This alt text is concise and descriptive. It provides the information the reader needs to know, but leaves out decorative information that would make the alt text too long,such as describing the Disability Victory logo.
What should alt text NOT include?
Since the alt text tag has been made visible on Twitter, we’ve seen a lot of bad alt text. In fact, disability advocates have called out the misuse of the alt text feature. Remember: alt text provides access, and misusing it is just as inaccessible as not using it at all. Don’t use the alt text for:
Photographer credits
“Hidden” messages
Jokes or inappropriate comments
Anything that isn’t in the image you’re describing
How to Add Alt Text on Websites and Social Media
When you’re posting a graphic to your social media or webpage, make sure that you include alt text that describes the information in the graphic.
If you’re working with a web developer, ensure that they are adding alt text to your website’s images. If you’re using a website builder such as Squarespace or Wix, read their help center articles on how to add alt text.
On social media platforms, there are dedicated places where you can write alt text. There are many great resources that explain how to write effective alt text and how to add it to social media and your webpages. We recommend these resources:
Want more tips? Read on for #MakeAccessAPractice Tip #2 on captioning your videos accurately.
Disability Victory is able to create resources like #MakeAccessAPractice thanks to generous supporters. Please support our work.