Inclusivity - Make it Happen

Digital marketing today is all about reaching the right people - images, SEO, good descriptions, are essential to any business wanting to reach out to customers. But are you considering everyone in your target market? :

Some people use screen readers to tell them what is on their computer screen. Some people use reading words instead of hearing speech. When you see content that you don’t understand (perhaps one in a language you don’t speak and Google Translate isn’t doing its job) do you tend to just scroll past it? You should expect the same treatment if a screen reader can’t read your content or a silent video makes no sense to the viewer (this includes people in noisy offices!) :

The spending power of the ‘Purple Pound’ is estimated to be around £249 billion. Read on to ensure that your social media doesn't miss out on a slice of that! :

Hashtags - Make sure everyone can understand your hashtags by capitalising the beginning of each word in a hashtag to make them screenreader friendly - screenreaders will recognise that a capital letter indicates a new word and will read accordingly. #ScreenReaderFriendly. This is known as Camel Case. :

Putting subtitles on videos - If you have ever watched Prime Minister's’ Questions with subtitles on, and fallen about laughing, you will know how irritating Youtube’s own subtitles are. We cab ensure accuracy by using web services like www.kapwing.com to add subtitles before uploading to your platform. (Embedded videos are more successful for reach than a link to Youtube anyway). It is also possible on Meta Business Suite to add subtitles to directly uploaded videos for Facebook and instagram - simply click 'add captions' after you've uploaded your video and select 'auto-generate' (you can check and edit them after!) :

Ensuring the text can be heard the way it is read - Screenreaders only recognise abbreviations when there are full stops between each letter. We mention Corporate Social Responsibility a lot, and to save letters, we use ‘C.S.R.’ on Twitter and image descriptions. :

Image descriptions - You can find out how to add alt text or image descriptions in this blog post - https://seeing-social.co.uk/blog/making-your-content-accessible-everyone The Royal National Institute for the Blind's Social Media Officer advises: "On platforms that don't have a visible alt text badge - Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, the best practice is to have alt text in the designated alt text box and an image description in the post itself, after your copy. This makes it visible to everyone, and also doesn't assume what assistive tech people are using." :

Ensuring that everyone can understand your posts is definitely a form of Corporate Responsibility. If you use us to communicate with your customers, we will ensure that alternative text is standard as part of our posting services. Contact me today for a free consultation to find out how we can help meet your social media requirements. :