Social Media Accessibility for Campaigns: Understanding Barriers and Best Practices

Every day, political candidates and elected officials share their messages and platforms on social media. Unfortunately, many are making a critical mistake–they fail to make their social media accessible. 

Accessibility and disability inclusion are important for every aspect of a campaign, from events to policy platforms. Digital accessibility is a key part of this, as websites, emails, and social media get the candidate’s message out to the world. Digital platforms are important tools for voter persuasion, volunteer recruitment, fundraising and get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts. Campaigns must make their digital communications accessible to reach potential voters, volunteers, and supporters in the disability community.

Today, we are going to talk about how campaigns can begin to implement digital accessibility in their social media.

Consistency is Key

Being consistent with accessibility is essential. Picture this: a campaign learns about accessible social media and then begins to apply it by adding captions to videos and alt text to images…and then they stop. Or, they only make their content accessible some of the time. Or, they only make posts about disability issues or disability-focused events accessible. 

Unfortunately, we’ve seen all of these scenarios. If you don’t practice accessibility consistently, then you are still perpetuating inaccessibility. Disabled people will not be able to rely on your campaign or organization as a source of accessible information and will become frustrated. If you only make content geared towards disabled people accessible, the access barriers will continue to segregate us from the rest of your campaign or organization. 

While social media is just one part of your campaign where accessibility matters and must be considered, it’s easy to begin implementing social media accessibility best practices. This broadcasts that you are considering our needs. It is a good first step towards crafting a campaign that is welcoming to and inclusive of disabled people. 

What is a Screen Reader?

Before we get started, an important note: many of our tips will talk about an assistive technology called a screen reader. A screen reader is used by people who are blind or have low vision to convert digital content into speech or braille. 

Here is a demonstration of how one popular screen reader called JAWS works:

Screen Reader Demo video from SLCC Universal Access.

Screen readers are available on computers and mobile devices. Screen reader accessibility is important for all digital assets, including documents, slide decks, webpages, and social media.

Alternative Text

One of the most fundamental practices of digital accessibility is using alternative text (or “alt text”) to provide a verbal description of images and graphics. Alt text is descriptive text that explains what is happening in an image or graphic so that screen readers can read it aloud to users. Far too many campaigns either forget to use alt text or provide inadequate alt text. For example, when President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for president, his social media team posted a picture of his letter on Twitter with alt text reading “a letter from Joe Biden.” There was no additional language in the tweet that described the content of letter, so someone who was blind and using a screen reader would only be able to access this information: “a letter from Joe Biden.”

Unfortunately, many times politicians and their social media teams fail to provide any alt text, such as in this statement from the Senate Appropriations Democrats. This statement is inaccessible because it doesn’t provide alt text, nor does it provide provide a link to a web-based version of the text that could be read elsewhere.

In contrast, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley’s team consistently applies alt text. For political statements, it’s important to either provide the full text of the statement that is pictured, or to provide a link to the full text of the statement in the body of the post. (Note: don’t put a URL in the alt text box on Twitter, as users won’t be able to click on the link).

While statements are just one example of graphics that require alt text, every image or graphic that you post on social media must be made accessible. This includes infographics, pictures from events, information about voting, and any other images that you use. You must also include alt text on all social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook. 

How do you write informative alt text? How do you add it to the different platforms? Head over to our Make Access A Practice explainer on alt text to learn everything you need to do to make your images accessible through alt text. 

Add Accurate Captions to Videos

Another fundamental accessibility practice is adding captions to your videos. 11 million Americans are Deaf or “have serious difficulty hearing,” and Barron’s has reported that “one million Deaf Americans’ votes are up for grabs” in this election.

Once Vice President Harris’s campaign for president launched, disabled Twitter users were quick to point out that the @KamalaHQ Twitter account had been posting video clips without captions, which meant that people who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or who have auditory processing disabilities were not able to know what was happening in the video. Since raising this issue, many of the videos have the closed captioning feature enabled, but some of the videos still appear to have automatic captions that are significantly delayed and inaccurate. Videos with auto captions are not fully accessible, as auto captions are only about 60% to 70% accurate.

In contrast, the @KamalaHarris Twitter account and the @VP Twitter account consistently post videos with burned-in captions (also called open captions). The captions accurately share what is said in the video, and the fact that they are burned into the video itself makes them more accessible, as people do not have to toggle captioning on. At the time of writing, one of the co-authors of this piece cannot access the closed captioning feature on their mobile device, even after updating the Twitter app.

Captions are very important, and there are many options available to your campaign for captioning videos, from video editing tools to captioning services. Head over to our Make Access A Practice explainer to learn all about how you can add captions to your videos.

Write hashtags in #camelCase or #PascalCase

If you’re adding hashtags to your social media posts, make sure to capitalize the first letter of each word in the hashtag. This is commonly known as Camel Case or Pascal Case. The difference between the two isn’t too important in this situation: Camel Case doesn’t capitalize the first letter of the first word, while Pascal Case does. 

When a hashtag is written in all lowercase letters, a screen reader cannot recognize the individual words in the hashtag. Therefore, hashtags in all lowercase letters are inaccessible to people who are blind or have low vision and who are using screen readers. When you capitalize the first letter of the words, a screen reader will be able to read out the individual words in the hashtag.

Be Careful about Social Media Trends: Are They Accessible?

Social media trends can be a fun way to contextualize your values and policies as a candidate through popular culture, and we see it happen all the time. But it’s important to consider whether those trends are accessible. If they aren’t, think about how you can make them more accessible. What are some examples of this?

Repeating Words/Emojis

Back in 2021, Twitter users started a simple but viral trend of sharing a statement followed by a massive number of red flag emojis, as pictured below. 

While sighted people can skip over the emojis visually, screen reader users must hear each of the 48 emojis read out loud to them. Memes that overuse emojis are both inaccessible. This also goes for memes that repeat words or phrases, such as tweets that use the same few words over and over until the tweet runs out of characters. 

However, there are ways you can make these memes accessible. Instead of using 48 red flags in the meme above, just use two or three. Or, post an image of red flags, and include appropriate alternative text to show the large number of emojis without having to read out each one individually.  

Drawing Memes with Special Characters or Emojis

Other trends utilize special characters or emojis to “draw” memes. One of the most common versions of this is the shrug meme, where parentheses, em dashes, parentheses, quotes, and slashes are used to draw out a meme of someone shrugging.

Several years back, the “sign bunny” meme became popular on Twitter. Similar to the shrug meme, it used special characters to draw a bunny holding up a sign in protest, and Twitter users would put their own messages in the sign. Even Senator Chuck Schumer jumped on this trend, customizing the sign to include a message and posting a link he wanted users to read.

Unfortunately, just like with the overuse of emojis, screen readers will read out the symbols in the meme, making this meme inaccessible to screen reader users. How could it be made accessible? Instead of posting the “sign bunny” in the text of the tweet, he could have posted a screenshot of the sign bunny with alternative text explaining the graphic.

When evaluating the accessibility of Twitter memes, an important best practice is to read the meme out loud, in the order in which it is written, including the emojis and characters. Remember that while you may visually perceive the spacing of the meme, screen reader users will have the information in the tweet read out loud to them. Take the “manifesting circle” meme below, which uses candle emojis positioned around “Congresswoman Cisneros:” while we see the see candles in a circle around former Texas Congressional candidate Jessica Cisneros’s name, what screen readers will hear is “manifesting circle: candle emoji candle emoji candle emoji candle emoji candle emoji Congresswoman Cisneros candle emoji candle emoji candle emoji candle emoji candle emoji.” While this is probably the most accessible of the memes shared in our examples, it still would be more accessible as a screenshot with alternative text. 

These are just a few ways that you can begin to make your digital presence more accessible. Remember: 28% of U.S. adults are part of the disability community, so failing to make your content accessible can impact millions of Americans. Luckily, once you start incorporating accessibility into your social media, it becomes second nature. These tips are an easy way to begin making your content more accessible to and inclusive of the disability community.