Twitter Accessibility

Key Tips

Hashtags

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Image Alt Text

• Twitter has excellent support for alt text.
• If you are tweet scheduling, use a scheduling platform that allows you to add Alt text
  • Buffer
  • Twitterrrific

Adding alt text in Twitter

1. Login to Twitter
2. Click on the Media or GIF icon
   
   
3. Select an image to upload
4. Click on the 'Add description ' link under the image
   
5. Add your alt text
   
6. Click 'Save'
7. That's it! Your image now has alt text.
8. An ALT symbol will appear on the bottom left of the image
   

Bad Example

• If you do not add alt text, Twitter adds 'Image' as alt text.
• Unlike Instagram and Facebook, Twitter does not use AI to add alt text.
• In the example below, the text 'Diversion and Inclusion Strategy 2020' is critical. But because there is no alt text, some users with disabilities will not be able to read the tweet.

Are you a student living with a disability, long term medical condition and/or mental health condition? Are you the primary carer of a person with a disability? We want to hear from you.

Details and links in thread below 🧵 ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/bzGrLkoKcg

— University of Melbourne (@UniMelb) September 24, 2021

Good Example

• The best alt text adds information that doesn't appear in surrounding content.
• In the example below, the first image is accompanied by the text, 'A tent on Gilbert Square showing a film to students.'
• In the second image, both the image text and photo are described, 'How it started: The tent in the previous image. How it's going: The tent fallen over.'

Although it wasn’t all good news for tents during #WelcomeWeek! There’s only so much you can plan for, as gale-force winds often had the better of us. pic.twitter.com/B9dlRis10t

— The University of Manchester (@OfficialUoM) September 26, 2021

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Closed Captioning

• Twitter allows captions to be added in SRT format.
• Add captions to video (as a .srt file)

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Other Considerations

• Some people want to avoid being constantly updated by social media.
• Consider allowing users to sign-up for email digests.

Useful Tools

• Visual alt text is a Chrome extension which visually shows alt text on social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.