#5: Keep asking your questions
#5: Keep asking your questions
Seriously. It's the only way to properly learn.
I get an absurd number of DMs on Twitter that start out apologetic. People apologize for bothering me before asking questions about accessibility.
If I thought y’all were bothering me, I wouldn’t keep my DMs open, honestly. I encourage questions. If you don’t know something, ask. If you’re curious about something, ask. If you want to learn how to do something better, ask,
I won’t always have the answers, but I will always do my best to help. All I ask when you slide into my DMs is that you introduce yourself if we’ve never had a proper chat before and be patient because my inbox is perpetually a hot mess (much like me).
Alexa
Digital Accessibility Win of the Week
Audio descriptions are sadly not a thing on social media. Heck, they’re not even a thing on YouTube or Vimeo. But if you pop onto Netflix and open the captions menu on a video, you’ll see an option for audio descriptions (if a track was provided to Netflix). However, a great workaround for this is to do a written description of your video so that blind and visually impaired people understand the visual aspects of your content.
The Wheel of Time team does an excellent job of threading a written description of their stunning videos on Twitter, which is doubly important since their videos contain very little dialogue.
Digital Accessibility Fail of the Week
I freaking love Philadelphia Cream Cheese, so this tweet hurt my heart. As I’ve previously stated, ASCII art is a no-no because screen readers turn them into absolute gobbledygook when they get ahold of it.
Have you recently spotted a major digital accessibility win or fail on social media? Send it to me! I might just feature it in my next newsletter. Feel free to email me at hello@therealalexa.com or you can DM me on Twitter. My inbox is always open!
You Should Retweet This
For a couple of years now Xbox and Microsoft have been making a tremendous effort to make gaming more accessible for the disabled community. It’s been wonderful to watch it all evolve and see the technology that comes out of the work they do with disabled gamers.
Word of Advice
This one is a quick and easy refresher that I feel like some people need:
Alt text is the physical description of an image (JPEG, PNG, GIF, etc…)
An audio description or written description is the physical description of a video (MOV, MP4, etc…)
I’ve recently noticed a number of people use “alt text” in relation to videos and wanted to clear up any confusion since alt text isn’t typically used when talking about videos.
Looking for an easy way to double-check your social media content before posting it? Download my handy checklist and make sure you always have the basics of digital accessibility for social media covered!
One Last Thing
The Instagram Edition of the Social Pulse Summit is happening this Wednesday, February 24th! I hope you’ll be able to pop in and check out my pre-recorded session, Insta-Accessibility, at 3:45 PM EST. The summit is free, so be sure to sign up!
Secrets, secrets are no fun unless you share with everyone! This logic also applies to newsletters and your Netflix login.