All posts and content shared on social media by Martin County must be accessible. Departments or divisions sharing content on social media should utilize all available accessibility features offered by each platform and refer to the resources on this page for additional guidance.
Use the following checklist to ensure your social media posts meet accessibility standards and best practices. This list is not exhaustive, but includes tips to help you avoid common issues. Download Printable Checklist (PDF)
Consider these general guidelines for creating accessible social media posts:
Capitalize the first letter of each word when using hashtags. Capitalizing the first letter of each word improves readability for everyone and helps screen readers identify the individual words.
Screen readers read the names of emojis. For example, "👏 👏 👏 👏" would be read aloud as "Clapping Hands Emoji, Clapping Hands Emoji, Clapping Hands Emoji, Clapping Hands Emoji." Be considerate of screen reader users by using emojis judiciously and adding spaces between them.
Screen readers cannot read embedded text within graphics or images. If an image contains text, include the text that appears on the image in the alt text description. However, if an image contains a significant amount of text, always provide a complete full-text version of the content in the body of your accompanying post, or link to it elsewhere.
Use WebAIM's Contrast Checker or Adobe Color to evaluate your graphic's color contrast.
"@SailfishSands Back to School Special, Teachers Play for Free (Must show school ID badge), August 3 through August 11."
This graphic contains minimal text, allowing for clear and concise alt text that contains the same words as in the image.
"Important safety information."
Screen readers cannot read embedded text within graphics. As a result, users relying on these technologies would only hear the alt text and would miss the essential information.
Since this graphic contains a large amount of text, a full-text version of the content should be linked to or included in the accompanying post, in addition to brief alt text such as, "Graphic illustrating after-storm safety procedures."
This post features a graphic with embedded text, but it lacks alt text and does not include the graphic's text in the body of the post.
Without these, a screen reader user would only hear, "Hashtag E-O-C Update," without any context or understanding of the information intended to be conveyed.
