It’s clear that optimizing your social media posts for accessibility is the right – and the smart – thing to do. Despite these benefits, just 36% of organizations caption all their video content.
Transcripts and captions help boost your SEO by helping search engines crawl and index your videos, and can even improve brand recall. In fact, 80% of people who use captions aren’t deaf or hard of hearing and eight out of every 10 people prefer silent videos. That’s because it’s not just people with disabilities who benefit from accessible social media. While the main use case for accessibility features is to enable people living with disabilities to use social media, using them properly also provides broader business benefits, including greater reach, higher engagement, and better SEO. That means you could be missing out on connecting with millions of social media users. A survey of Facebook users in 50 countries found that more than 30 percent of people reported difficulty with at least one of the following: seeing, hearing, speaking, organizing thoughts, walking, or grasping with their hands. How large is that audience? Larger than you probably think. Some social media marketers might be reluctant to dedicate time to social media accessibility since these efforts aren’t required under WCAG 2.1 accessibility standards. But with 78% of consumers saying that social media posts impact their purchasing decisions, it really is in your best interest to connect with as many social media users as possible – including those with disabilities. The business case for accessible social media While you can’t improve the accessibility of the platforms, you can follow the principles of inclusive design and provide everyone with equal access to your content. The challenge with social media is that most platforms are not fully accessible – including popular new apps like TikTok.
While many organizations are taking the right steps towards a more accessible and inclusive website, the same isn’t necessarily true for their social media channels.
0 kommentar(er)
