Speakers: Cecilia Warren, Maryland Dept of Disabilities & Emily Allen, Maryland Emergency Mgmt Agency Session Description: Does your communication plan ensure that social media reaches all members of the community? Preparedness and public safety messages miss a significant portion of the community if they cannot be accessed with assistive technology. Learn how to adapt your social media messages to make them accessible. Strategies to overcome common accessibility barriers will be discussed. Discover tools that you can start using today to improve the accessibility of your agency's social media campaign.

1. Accessible Social Media for an
Inclusive Community
Cecilia Warren
Director, Emergency Preparedness Policy
Maryland Department of Disabilities
@MDDisabilities
Emily Allen
Digital Engagement Coordinator
Maryland Emergency Management Agency
@allen_emilym
@MDMEMA

2. Live Poll
DO YOU FEEL YOUR AGENCY'S SOCIAL MEDIA IS
ACCESSIBLE FOR THOSE WITH ACCESS AND FUNCTIONAL
NEEDS?
TEXT THE WORD EMILYALLEN956 TO THE NUMBER 22333. THEN
SEND BACK YOUR ANSWER
“A: YES” OR “B: NO”

3. What you will learn
SKILLS TO EXECUTE THE WORK-AROUNDS AND
ACCESSIBILITY GOALS
LAWS PERTAINING TO INFORMATION
ACCESSIBILITY
HOW TO TEST YOUR NEW SKILLS

4. What you won’t learn
FULL REVIEW OF SECTION 508
HOW TO FIX YOUR AGENCY WEBSITE
CODING
METHODS FOR CREATING/REMEDIATING
ACCESSIBLE DOCUMENTS

5. What is Accessibility?
WHY SHOULD I CARE?
TIME CONSUMING?
TOO DIFFICULT?
TIP SHEET WILL BE PROVIDED WITH A COLLECTION OF
RESOURCES

6. What is Assistive Technology?
HOW IS IT USED TO INTERACT WITH SOCIAL
MEDIA?

7. Laws Pertaining to Information
Accessibility
• Americans with Disabilities Act
• Section 508 of Rehabilitation Act
• State laws
• 21st century communications and video accessibility
act of 2010
• Telecommunications Act of 1996
• And other federal laws

8. Do These Laws Apply to Me?
• Yes, if…
• State or local government agency which receives funds from
the federal government
• Organization that receives funds from the feds
• Educational entity
• Produce, broadcast, or distribute video programs that can be
viewed in U.S.
• Manufacture hardware or software that can display video
programs
• Produce content for any of the entities identified above (or
receives $ from feds)

9. What Does This Mean for My Agency?
• Equal access to information
• Effective communication
• Make your messages accessible to reach the broadest
audience- your community!
• Social media is used to issue alerts, conduct outreach,
post notices, etc.

10. Benefits of Accessibility
• Search engine optimization
• Better technical performance
• Increased impressions on social media
• Broader reach of community

11. Content Development/Remediation
• Ideally, the daily social media manager
• Train staff on some tasks
• Interns
• Remediation of published files

12. Social Media Users Also Include
• Visual/blind/low vision
disabilities
• Deaf or hard of hearing
• Mobility or motor function
disabilities
• Non-native language
• Cognitive disabilities
• Seniors
• Underserved communities
• Homeless
• Others with access &
functional needs
*Veterans

13. All social media should include
• Agency contact information (phone, email, TTY)
conspicuously posted
• Contact info for official social media accessibility team
• Simple language and messages
• Images, graphics, and photos should have alternative text
• Videos should have synchronous captioning
• Test the accessibility of your social media at regular intervals

14. Social Media Accessibility Teams
• Contact info for official accessibility teams
• Facebook
• @fbaccess
• facebook.com/accessibility
• Twitter
• @a11yteam
• Google – YouTube
• @googleaccess
• google.com/accessibility

15. Choose a photo description
• Option A: A brown and white dog, located safe
inside a home, stands on gray carpet with a
bandana around his neck. There is red ball in
the background to the left of him.
• Option B: A dog is inside and in the
foreground of the picture. A toy ball is in the
background.
• Option C: A small dog inside a home looking at
the camera and not paying attention to his
favorite toy ball which is behind him.

16. How to write photo descriptions
• Context matters!
• Image:
• Who is in the photo?
• What are they doing?
• Where is the photo being taken?
• How does photo relate to post topic?

17. Example: Twitter - No Photo Description

18. Example: Twitter - Benchmark Example

19. Improve the Accessibility of Tweets
• Image description
• Link shorteners, define links
• CamelCase
• #HurricanePreparednessChat
• Mindful of acronym in your hashtags
• Be mindful of retweeting inaccessible content

20. Twitter Settings for Accessibility

21. Twitter: How to Add Image Description

22. Twitter: Putting it All Together

23. Improve Accessibility of Facebook Posts
• 2000 characters available
• Add image descriptions
• Facebook’s auto generated alternative text can be
incorrect
• Post > “Image:” [your image description goes here]
• Videos should be captioned
• Facebook live does not have LIVE captioning
• Captioning available after broadcast

24. Example: Facebook - Accessibility Failure

25. Example: Facebook Photo Description

26. YouTube Automatic Caption Fail

27. Improve accessibility of YouTube
• Use only high quality audio
• Use a microphone
• Avoid background noise
• Wind
• Music
• Others talking
• Add synchronous captioning

28. Captions vs. Subtitles
• Subtitles:
• Often used for language translation
• Can be localized to cultural practices
• Does NOT include description of non-spoken
sounds (smoke alarm, phone ring, dog bark)
• Captions:
• Identifies speakers, music, sound effects, etc.
• Is the textual equivalent of the audible
content

29. Captions: Open, Closed, CART
• Open- Captions appear automatically, cannot opt out
• Closed- Feature must be enabled to display captions
• CART- AKA ‘real time captioning’ for live programs
and events

30. Compliance
• 1-3 lines of text onscreen for 3-7 seconds
• Synchronized with audio and onscreen images
• No more than 32 characters/line
• Use upper and lowercase letters
• Pixel size varies according to resolution
• Don’t cover essential visual elements in video

31. Best practices
• Music or audio descriptions should be in [brackets]
• Speakers should be identified
• Describe sound effects when they clarify events
• Synchronize captions to audio
• Preserve slang
• Words verbatim when possible

32. YouTube: Video Manager

33. YouTube: Select new subtitles/language

34. YouTube: Select language

35. YouTube: Transcribe and Auto-Sync

36. YouTube: Adding transcript

37. YouTube: Set timing

38. YouTube: Captions complete, upload

39. YouTube: Putting it all together

40. SoundCloud
• Press Releases
• Human voice vs. computer voice
• Sound available for media
• Available for everyone with or without a disability

41. Improve Instagram Accessibility
• 2,200 characters available
• Define image
• Same as Facebook
• Post > “Image:” [image description] >Hashtags
• Define “acronymed” hashtags
• Easier for cross posting

42. Instagram

43. Not quite there … yet.
• Test third party posting apps prior to use
• Hootsuite
• Tweetdeck
• SnapChat
• Agency apps
• Twitter GIFs
• Facebook

44. Quick methods to test your posts/tweets/images
• Phone- accessibility settings
• PC
• Mac/Apple/Voiceover
• Screenreaders
See resource page for additional information

45. Activate voiceover settings – Test it!

46. QUESTIONS?
Please provide feedback on this session – Session Code 258