Our TOP TIPS for making your content and platforms more accessible!

On Global Accessibility Awareness Day I wanted to share our TOP TIPS to make your content and platforms more accessible.

Accessibility is an umbrella term and means different things for people with different disabilities. For me it’s physical features such as ramps and lifts, yet for others it is ensuring online platforms are accessible.

For people who have hearing impairments if a video doesn’t have subtitles then it becomes inaccessible. But putting closed captions on your video content doesn’t just improve the inclusivity it will also broaden your audience in general, with Facebook saying 85% of users watch videos without sound.

If you don’t have time to subtitle content for yourself, most platforms have an automatic generated option now but depending on how quiet someone is speaking, or the accent they have, you may find the text will have a few typos. If you have the time and the software subtitling for yourself is a better option.

Now imagine you are someone with a visual impairment and watching a video on silent. You also have to be sure your subtitles are in an accessible font. The best fonts to choose from are: Tahoma, Calibri, Helvetica, Arial, Verdana and Times New Roman.

These fonts are also the best to use for a written text as a whole. Whether you have sent an email, you are designing a document or delivering a presentation. Fonts are important. If you want an accessible font with a little more … personality … you could use Arvo, Museo Slab or Rockwell but this is for titles as opposed to body text.

Be sure to consider how you use colours and contrasts too. Most creatives like to use colour palettes to design content, just like I do, and there are websites available which can tell you if your colour combinations are accessible and for what format. We even changed our colour palette to ensure it reached the bar better.

Alternative text on images you share on your social media are important too. This text tells people who can’t see the image what it features so they can imagine it for themselves. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all give you simple options for adding alt text, but LinkedIn doesn’t give you much in the way of a word count, so my advice would be to put in the alt text box ‘see comments for alt text’ and type it out there instead.

Once you have posted your lovely new selfie on your Instagram, and you have added your alt text, remember to use Camel Case for your hashtags. Typing #GrittyTalent as opposed to #grittytalent not only makes it easier to read in general, it also enables text to speech assistive technology to read the hashtag as separate words correctly, not as one long word.

Since starting in my role at Gritty Talent I have been constantly learning and adapting our content and platforms to ensure they are as inclusive as possible and thought this was the prime opportunity to share some tips with you for making yours more accessible too!

About the Author: Chloe Ball-Hopkins is a former Para Archer for Team GB, a TEDx Speaker and adapted fashion campaigner. Chloe previously worked for the BBC as a reporter and producer, and is currently finishing her Media Production Degree while also working part-time for Gritty Talent as our content producer.