When it comes to accessibility, many marketers and communications professionals want to know what makes it important for social media and what it means to be inclusive online. There are several distinct reasons why creating accessible social media content is important.
The most important reason for implementing accessible best practices when you create social media content is that you simply care about your clients, customers, and connections—established and potential—and how they engage with you and your brand online. You should care if your content is clear and understandable.
You should care if any part of your audience is experiencing obstacles online. You should care if people are not having an equitable experience due to inaccessible social media content.
Accessibility on social media is a small but important part of a larger objective: making the online world and digital communications truly inclusive for everyone.
Everyone at some point or another will be disabled, either through age, illness, or injury. Many brands and organizations are trying to focus more on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work, and disability is something that affects every demographic and every area of DEI.
Accessibility is also beneficial for everyone. To illustrate this point, author and disability rights activist Emily Ladau explains the "curb-cut effect" in Demystifying Disability.
"While curb cuts were initially designed for wheelchair users, anyone can use them—and many people find them helpful. Think about it: baby strollers, shopping carts, wheeled suitcases, roller skates. Curb cuts really come through in a lot of situations."
Social media is often considered frivolous in comparison to its more traditional marketing counterparts like websites and email. However, it should not be overlooked that social media is a major communication tool used by governments, political leaders, intergovernmental organizations, and emergency services around the world. For many people, social media is a trusted source of information that they turn to first during natural disasters, medical emergencies, and other life-threatening or dangerous events.
If emergency content isn't accessible, the health and safety of countless lives could be put at risk.
From a marketing standpoint, implementing accessibility best practices just makes good business sense. When promoting a product, service, cause, or initiative, it’s logical to want your message to reach and be engaged by as many people as possible in the hopes of converting them into a contact, customer, or follower.
By making your content more accessible, you can avoid excluding a sizable portion of your audience and missing out on important conversions, conversations, and connections.
Like with a physical location or your website, you should also make sure your social media and digital communications are meeting current accessibility guidelines. Most digital accessibility lawsuits focus on the websites of brands and companies, but it’s not unrealistic to think that social media platforms and apps will soon face similar legal scrutiny.
In the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is often referenced in regard to the legal requirements surrounding accessibility. The ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability. It also requires that employers provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities and necessitates accessibility requirements on public accommodations. For example, the ADA ensures that a place of business can easily be accessed by someone using a wheelchair or that a parking lot has the required number of accessible spots based on its size.
Because the ADA was passed in 1990—well before most modern digital platforms existed—it’s usually felt to be more applicable to physical facilities than online spaces. However, a 2019 decision by the United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ADA can, in certain instances, also apply to the websites and apps of businesses and sided with a blind customer who was pursuing legal action against Domino’s Pizza for not having an accessible website.
The court wrote that the "alleged inaccessibility of Domino’s website and app impedes access to the goods and services of its physical pizza franchises—which are places of public accommodation." This was just one of 2,890 digital ADA lawsuits filed in 2019. In 2021 alone there were more than 4,000 ADA-based cases filed, a 15 percent increase from 2020.
On April 24, 2024, the Federal Register published the Department of Justice’s final rule updating its regulations for Title II of the ADA. The rule has specific requirements about how to ensure that web content and mobile apps are accessible to people with disabilities.
In addition to the ADA, federal agencies within the United States and their vendors are also beholden to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act (29 U.S.C. 794d) which requires them "to make their electronic and information technology (EIT) accessible to people with disabilities."
A memorandum was posted in December 2023 by the White House titled M-24-08 Strengthening Digital Accessibility and the Management of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Not only does it stress the importance of accessible government communications and enforcing Section 508, but it also outlines very clear steps agencies need to take to meet the requirements of Section 508 and timelines for implementing them. Social media is even mentioned in M-24-08 under the first bullet point in Section III, Subsection D.
A new bill titled the Websites and Software Applications Accessibility Act was introduced by U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth in September 2022. If passed, the act would require "employers, public entities, and public accommodations that provide goods or services through a website or online application to make those websites and applications accessible to individuals with disabilities."
Outside of the United States, several other nations and governing bodies around the world have policies and regulations related to web accessibility including Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
Even if your country does not have clear legislature or guidelines specifically for digital accessibility on social media, it’s probably only a matter of time before actual regulations are outlined and consistently enforced. It’s better to be proactive about making your social media content accessible rather than reactive if a lawsuit pops up for your brand or organization.
Digital professionals should reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to make sure they’re meeting updated standards for web accessibility. While not exhaustive, the WCAG is the most universal set of guidelines currently available for digital accessibility around the globe.
Want to learn a little more about disability and digital accessibility? Check out the links below!
