Your Guide To Creating Accessible Posts On Instagram
The popularity of Instagram isn’t limited to individuals who are sighted. Instagram is used by many people who are legally blind. Indeed, the Royal National Institute of Blind People reports that 93% of blind individuals possess some degree of vision in part.
There may be more disabled users out there that may be viewing content on your Instagram account that may exceed your expectations.
Therefore, ensuring the accessibility of your posts on your Instagram account is extremely vital.
Here are some tips and suggestions to assist in developing strategies and creating images and videos that will allow your Buy real Instagram followers UK to be entertained by your Instagram account.
Tips for creating accessible posts on Instagram
● Include an alt text with every image you upload
“Alt text” has a connotation of code, especially meta information like tags, so they’re commonly mistaken with alt tags (which aren’t the same thing).
Image descriptions are written as alt text, which is an HTML attribute. When an image fails to load, a browser displays the image description. To assist blind users with reading the image description, screen readers also use alt text.
The image’s description is important, not the code that contains it.
Instagram has enabled customers to create and upload their alt text to their images for several years, but many don’t know how.
- When creating a new post, click Advanced Settings to find the Accessibility options.
- Then select “Write alt text” and type a description for the image.
- For adding image descriptions to an existing post, click Edit in the post’s menu.
- The Edit info screen allows you to edit the alt text. Select that button on the bottom right side of your screen.
“ Is it true that Instagram automatically allows my images to be accessible?”
In the absence of alt text, Instagram generates it automatically. The purpose of auto-generated alt text is not to save your time. This is a safety net for Instagram’s blind users to retain some of the experience when confronted with inaccessible images on their feed.
● Write image descriptions manually
A good description of an image doesn’t rely on keywords for search engine optimization or basic identifying details (“A man with a dog”). It’s about providing blind or partially sighted users with a similar experience as sighted users.
Good image descriptions can require practice, which is why they should be considered an integral part of the content generation process.
- Keep non-visual information out of images that sighted users cannot understand. If the image was taken from a movie, it would be identifiable, but you cannot determine from a picture of a product that the stuff is of “great value.”
- You should write complete sentences so that the description is easy to understand when you read it.
- Be expressive. If the image is designed to evoke an emotional reaction from the observer, the description should also do the same.
- Try to limit your message to 125 characters or less.
- Don’t be a spammer by loading your alt text with a lot of keywords or promoting your own sales copy.
● All videos should have subtitles or captions
Captions will not only make your videos accessible to people who are deaf but will also make them more accessible to many other Buy Instagram likes UK cheap. Biteable reports that 64% of marketers get better results from captioned videos.
- With IGTV’s advanced settings, you can automatically generate captions for longer videos.
- For shorter IGTV videos, it may be more convenient to add your captions to increase accuracy and customize their appearance. As a result, your video is also accessible across multiple platforms.
- For Reels, automatic captions are not available yet. It will be your responsibility to create your captions and incorporate them into your video.
● Minimize the use of emojis
Emojis also have descriptive names, which screen readers read out – and some of them are quite long, especially if you use emojis with different skin tones.
- Use emojis wisely – and with good reason.
- The use of emoji skin tones is excellent for promoting diversity, but we should abstain from using them if choosing a tone is not essential.
- Emojis can be added at the end of a post to avoid interrupting readers.
When people overused emojis, it used to be irritating. It would be very frustrating. The majority of screen readers now say, ‘20 smiley faces’, which isn’t too bad. You should always use emojis at the end of a post.”
● Use hashtags carefully
Hashtags are necessary to make content more discoverable. Screen readers, however, can cause difficulty for blind users.
- Every word should be capitalized in the hashtag to make the words easier to pronounce.
- Incorporating hashtags into the main text of a post can save characters, but it can be confusing for screen readers. Keep hashtags to the end of your post, if possible.
- Each post should only contain two or three of the most important or trending hashtags.
4. Avoid animated gifs
GIF stickers and animations with blinking, flashing, or other attention-grabbing effects are very popular among Instagram followers UK. It is important to note that some people are sensitive to such effects and may even have seizures if they are exposed to them.
Due to this, some users may restrict animated GIFs by default, and blind users may not understand the GIF without additional context – especially if the GIF is a meme demanding a lot of additional contexts.
- Considering whether anyone unable to see the GIF will still find your post to be understandable and complete.
- Create your gifs so they don’t loop too long like for not more than 5 secs.
- The Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT) can be used to test animations or GIFs for seizure risks.
- As with any image, you still need to add alt text when posting a GIF to Instagram.
Conclusion
Rather than leaving it to the author to come up with a description for the image at the last minute, include alt text in the copy delivery agreement.
Preparing your captions and/or transcript simultaneously with the video is also a good idea.
By incorporating accessibility into the content creation process from the beginning, you reduce the risk that you’ll need to make your content accessible before sharing it.
