Accessibility
Removing accessibility barriers makes our social media community better.
Why?
First and foremost, making our social media community accessible to all is just the right thing to do. Secondly, we have a legal requirement to make information and content that pertains to services, activities and programs offered by the university accessible. You probably don't need a third reason, but we'll give you one anyway: providing image descriptions and captions can have benefits when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.
Image Descriptions
All images on university social media channels must include an image description or alt-text.
How to Include Image Descriptions
You can choose to put an image description in the bottom of the post caption, or use one of the pre-built fields on most major social media channels. Here's where to find the alt text field on Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite and Instagram.
Facebook: Once you've loaded an image file into your post, hover over the image until two grayed-out buttons appear. Click the edit button. Once in the photo editing window, click on the alt text section and fill in your brief image description into the field to override the auto-generated alt text.
Tip: If you forget to add alt text before publishing your post, you can still make your image accessible. Facebook allows you to edit an image's alt text after it has been published. Click on the photo, then hover over the lower right corner until the word "options" appears. Click "options" and then select "Change Alt Text" from the menu.
Twitter/X: The first step is to enable image descriptions by visiting Settings and Privacy > Accessibility > Compose Image Descriptions. Once image descriptions are enabled, a new field will appear at the bottom of an image when one is uploaded in the Compose new Tweet window. Click "add description" to fill in a brief image description.
Instagram: Before you hit "Share," select "Advanced Settings" at the bottom of the screen. In the Advanced Settings screen, select "Write Alt Text" under the "Accessibility" heading. Then, fill in your brief image description in the available field.
Image Description/Alt-Text Tips
- You don't have to paint a long, detailed word-picture. Instead, think about what information, emotion or tone the image is trying to convey and describe that.
- Be sure to include any info a person would need to participate in a "program, service or activity" hosted by the university.
- When using infographics, avoid redundancy and only include in the alt-text information that is not already covered in the post copy.
- Avoid assuming any person's gender, race or identity. Unless it's pertinent to the post, leave that info out. If it is pertinent to the post, then always ask people how they identify before you write your image description.
- Use general terms and avoid specialized jargon, if possible.
Captions
All videos (including livestreams) must have captions at the time that they are posted. If you cannot post the video natively with captions, then a link to an accessible version of the video is required either in the post copy or in a follow-up comment or tweet.
Caption Tips
- You can use YouTube or Facebook's auto-generate function, but you must manually review them as they are only about 95% accurate and often incorrectly display proper nouns. For example, the university's name or the name of a speaker.
- If you're going to post a video to both YouTube and Facebook, you can generate and correct your captions in YouTube first. Then, you can download that finished caption file as an SRT and upload it to Facebook to caption the Facebook version of the video. (Note: this only works when going from YouTube to Facebook and not the other way around.)
- Both closed captions and open (or "burned in") captions make your content accessible to your audience. However, closed captions offer an advantage in that they can be turned on or off by your viewers, putting them in control.
- Internal videos (e.g. closed group) that are unlisted and not public may not require captioning. You must let your audience know that captioning will be provided if an accommodation request is made. For ADA compliance questions, please contact the university's [[cacostello, ADA Coordinator]].
- View our video captioning tip sheet (pdf) to learn the different options that are available when captioning videos.
Captioning Services
In order to ensure your public videos are accessible, whether they are live or recorded, you may decide to enlist the help of a captioning service. While there are several options out there, University Web & Design has had good experiences with the following services:
- Ai-Media (Access Innovation Media) for captioning live video.
- $3/min to stream to one source (e.g. Facebook or YouTube). Additional $1/min to stream to a second source (e.g. Facebook and YouTube). Prices subject to change.
- 99% accurate.
- Human-generated captions in real time with access to the captions after the event to make corrections.
- Ability to submit a list of words, names and/or phrases to the captioner (e.g. Wren Building, William & Mary) to add to their vocabularies ahead of the stream to ensure they are spelled correctly and use proper style.
- To schedule your captioned livestream, reach out to Ai-Media and they will walk you through the process. Tip: be sure to indicate your billing information for efficient routing as they have many W&M clients.
- Rev.com is a recommended service for post-production captions.
- $1.50/min. Prices subject to change.
- 24-hour turnaround time.
- 99% accurate.
- Ability to edit the captions within the platform after they have been generated.
General Tips
- Try using a screen reader or other assistive technology to get a better idea of what is useful and what is frustrating. (VoiceOver for Apple or TalkBack for Android are two examples.)
- Use camel case for hashtags, like #MondayMotivation.
- It's typically more efficient to make one version of your content that is accessible, but if that's not an option, you can and must link to a separate, accessible version of the content.
- Updating all of the posts you've ever published can seem like an overwhelming project. Focus on making sure all of your content moving forward is accessible and only go back and update past inaccessible content as time allows.
- Here's a printable guide (pdf) for easy offline reference.
