SPARKS

June 2021

June 2021 Roundup

Global Accessibility Awareness Day:

Global Accessibility Awareness Day took place on the 20th of May and raised a lot of questions about how we can make social media and websites more accessible for everyone, no matter what their abilities. So, this month, we want to make sure that your social media channels and website are more accessible and inclusive.

Websites:

A recent study by WebAIM found that over 98% of websites have at least one accessibility issue. Digital accessibility is all about making sure that websites and social media are available to anyone and everyone no matter what their ability level may be.

With Google recently revealing that they have no immediate plans to make the level of accessibility that a website has a factor in their search ranking, it is up to businesses to ensure that their website is making every effort to be as accessible as possible.

By ensuring that your website has features, such as text descriptions on images for the visually impaired and captions on video presentations for those that are deaf or hard of hearing, you are making sure that the website and content that you have put so much work into can be enjoyed by everyone. As a result, your level of engagement will increase, as your content is available and enjoyable for everyone.

There are so many tools available these days to help you make your website and its content accessible to everyone and anyone. Tools such as WAVE aim to help you evaluate your web content to make it more accessible and easier to use for individuals with disabilities.

GAAD also shared some of the ways that you can be more accessible with your content, such as sending an internal email to your IT staff or web development team to see what you could be doing to make your website more accessible.

@johnyblueyes

Reply to @football_editz..21 How to do a voice like Siri ##texttospeech ##tiktoktutorial ##tiktokcoach tiktoktips

♬ original sound - JohnyBluEyes TikTok Coach

TikTok:

There are a huge number of ways to make your social media posts accessible to everyone, no matter their abilities. With some of the most popular social media apps now introducing speech to text functions and subtitles that you can add to your videos and stories.

One of the most popular trends on TikTok right now is their text to speech feature in which creators on the app add text and voiceover to their videos, making them both entertaining and accessible to everyone, including those with hearing or vision difficulties.

Instagram:

Much like on TikTok, over on Instagram a speech to text feature is slowly being introduced to Instagram users across the world. This feature allows users of the app to include subtitles on their videos, be they on stories or on your feed. With many influencers on the app quickly getting on board with the feature it highlights just how important ensuring your posts are accessible to all your followers really is. It also allows for those that have sound off on their devices to read the captions instead.

Some influencers, such as Sinead Burke, are even going the extra mile and adding image descriptions to the captions of their posts, to make them user friendly for those that are visually impaired.

As an added bonus, as the world starts to slowly return to some sort of what we called normality, and people start commuting again, they may not always have headphones and be able to listen to the audio on your posts, but if you enable speech to text, your posts will be engaged with no matter where the person viewing your post is, as well as being accessible to everyone no matter what their ability level is.

We know what our next task is anyway, to evaluate the accessibility of our own website and socials and practice what we preach! Be sure to get in touch with us if you need to implement any new tools to your site and we would be happy to help!

 

Need help with your digital strategy or have a specific topic you want us to cover?

If there’s anything in particular you want us to cover in our future Sparks Roundups, or if you need help planning and implementing your digital marketing campaigns, just pop judy@h-c.ie an email and we will be happy to get back to you. 

For more on our digital offering, take a look at our Digital Marketing services or follow us wherever you get your social: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

#HC hun

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