Optimize Other Business Communications for Accessibility
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Identify how to make your hashtags accessible.
- Explain the difference between emoji and emoticons and which is more accessible.
- Define an accessibility mindset.
In the previous units you learned many ways to make sure that your major forms of business communication are accessible. But there are always new avenues of communication to consider when trying to create accessible content.
This unit covers other business considerations and ways of communicating with your audience—including some accessibility challenges you may not have considered.
Make Hashtags Accessible
Hashtags are vital to helping your social media posts be found by relevant audiences. They’re often searched by users trying to find specific content, and they’re also used by social media platforms to serve relevant content to the right audience. However, they’re not always fully accessible. Here are the steps to take to make sure your hashtags are accessible.
Use CamelCase. When writing hashtags, capitalizing the first letter of each new word (#ExampleText) is extremely helpful in making your meaning clear. This makes it easier for all users to grasp your meaning quickly, even when scanning. CamelCase is also necessary to optimize the experience of those who use screen readers. Screen readers usually try to read each word separately but can be easily confused by hashtags that contain multiple words with no spaces.
Use descriptive hashtags. Make sure your hashtags describe your content accurately and make them precise rather than generic or vague. This makes it easier for all audiences to understand your post’s meaning.
Use acronyms and abbreviations sparingly. For optimization, it may be necessary to use acronyms or abbreviations, but do so only when necessary, and consider using a second hashtag that spells out the full word.
Consider the context. Make sure that your hashtags are culturally sensitive and appropriate for all audiences. Consider having someone else double-check your planned hashtags to ensure that they cannot be misinterpreted or seen as offensive. Search for that hashtag on your planned platform, and ensure that it’s not associated with problematic or insensitive posts.
Test your hashtags for accessibility. Run your planned post with hashtags through a screen reader or an accessibility checker, and make sure they’re able to be easily understood.
Use Emojis to Enhance Meaning
Emojis and emoticons are now a standard part of our everyday communication, and can’t be completely avoided. However, there are some accessibility considerations with their usage. Here are a few tips on using emojis (and avoiding emoticons) to enhance the meaning of your posts, while not relying on them as the only way to understand your posts.
- Use emojis, not emoticons, as emojis have built-in alt text descriptions and are treated as text by a screen reader. Emoticons are generally treated as punctuation by a screen reader, and will not be clear to the user.
- Use popular, widely recognized emojis that translate well across devices.
- Use emojis that are visible in both light and dark modes, and offer appropriate color contrast.
- Don’t use emojis in place of words or letters in your post. Use full words to convey your meaning, and emojis to add emphasis.
- Don’t rely on emojis to express or change the meaning or tone of your post.
- Place emojis at the end of sentences, but avoid repeating them, or using too many.
Keep Font Choices Accessible
You already learned how to choose more accessible fonts, and the appropriate color contrast and sizes to use. But there are other issues surrounding your font choices that can make them more or less accessible to your audience.
Bold and italics: Screen readers generally ignore bolding, underline, and other styling in your text. It’s best practice to make sure that any emphasis you wish to add to your text is clear even without the usage of bolding or italics, when possible. If you need to emphasize a certain section of text, consider adding a text marker like “important” or adding a graphic with appropriate alt text to convey importance.
Color: Do not use color to convey meaning or emphasis in text.
Strikethrough: Some screen readers process strikethrough text correctly. But it’s not guaranteed to be universally accessible. While you may mean to convey that the text may be deleted, not all screen readers announce this formatting. Try to avoid using strikethrough text, and if you must use it, include text in square brackets with an explanation of the change. (Ex: "[deleted]" or "[replaced with new text].")
Here are a couple of examples:
| Our office will be closed on Monday! | Important! Our office will be closed on Monday. |
|---|---|
|
In this example, the important text is only bolded, which a screen reader doesn’t convey. |
In this example, the text is still bolded, and it’s also noted by the word “Important” with an exclamation point, which a screen reader does convey. |
Make Memes Available to Everyone
Memes are fun and, like emojis, are now a standard part of online communication. Making them accessible to your entire audience requires ensuring that they’re perceivable and understandable to all users, culturally sensitive, and appropriate for the context.
Here are a few tips to make your memes more accessible.
Use alt text and audio. Describe the content of your meme with alt text so screen readers can access it. Consider adding audio descriptions to your memes as well.
Caption your memes. Memes are often meant to be funny, but you should make sure the humor is clear to everyone, regardless of their reading level or language background. Use clear and concise language in the caption of your meme to describe or clarify its meaning.
Consider the type. Avoid using text that’s too small, distorted in any way, or otherwise difficult to read.
Be aware of color contrast. Make sure the text and images in your memes have enough contrast to be readable by everyone, including users with color blindness.
Avoid flashing or strobing effects. These can be distracting for all users, especially those with neurodivergence, and in the worst case they can trigger seizures.
Trailblazer Cala explains:
“Artificial intelligence has come a long way in image description, but it can’t solve everything. Say a user is totally blind and uses a screen reader. As they’re scrolling through their social media feed they come across an image that has been described by AI. Their screen reader says, ‘Image may be dog, indoors, and text that says, “Mondays.”’ But the image actually shows a brown dog with floppy ears and a sad drooping expression lying on a couch. The text below the dog reads, ‘Mondays.’”
AI can describe the individual elements of the image, but it leaves out key details and context in the meme that connect the dots to make the picture funny. That’s why it’s always important to have a human review any AI-generated captions and descriptions.
Clarify Direction
When working with your team members, it’s best to make all project goals clear, and outline project parameters while offering firm deadlines.
Trailblazer Kurt explains why articulating goals and deadlines is important.
“Neurodivergent people often have binary modes of thinking (things are either hot or cold, good or bad, and so forth). They also work best with specific parameters for tasks, and clearly communicated deadlines. Without clear parameters and deadlines, there are too many options available, and neurodivergent people get stuck or overwhelmed trying to guess what you want or what you mean.”
Consider Tone; Avoid Sarcasm
While funny to some, sarcasm in communications can be an issue for neurodivergent people. Kurt shared an incident where sarcasm tripped him up.
“It’s best to avoid sarcasm, even in jokes, with neurodivergent colleagues. Because many of us can miss nonverbal cues, even the simplest joke can be devastating. I made a comment to a colleague who was working out and had visibly turned an inactive life into an active life. I was commending them on such a healthy lifestyle change, and they sarcastically acted upset, told me nothing had changed, and wondered why I would say that. I was stunned, felt awful, and started to apologize profusely. They then laughed and said, ‘Just kidding.’ To this day I select my words carefully around this person and make no comments on anything other than work.”
Develop an Accessibility-Focused Mindset
Accessibility is an issue that affects us all, and as our communications methods and styles continue to evolve there will always be new accessibility issues to consider. This module offers a strong foundation in the basics of accessibility, but the key to truly making your communications accessible is to adopt an accessibility-focused mindset.
Always consider how various audiences will interact with your content. Create strong, diverse networks to advise your communications teams on accessibility issues and help check your content for accessibility. As you learned in the beginning of this module, the goal of an accessibility mindset is not to merely conform to the legal requirements for accessibility, but to truly optimize your content for all users, allowing everyone an equitable experience when they interact with it.