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STAYING INFORMED AND CONNECTED DURING COVID-19 

MAKING SOCIAL MEDIA ACCESSIBLE FOR THOSE WITH DISABILITIES 
NOW MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

**MAY 21ST IS GLOBAL ACCESSIBILITY AWARENESS DAY**

Mike Shebanek

Facebook’s head of Accessibility

With shelter in place orders still going strong in most of the country, usage of social media has increased. But for those with disabilities, understanding some of those social media posts can be hard. Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) promotes digital accessibility and inclusion for people with all disabilities. Globally, over a billion people live with some form of disability.  According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 2.2 billion people worldwide have vision impairment or blindness and an estimated 466 million people worldwide – 5% of the population – have disabling hearing loss.

Ahead of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Facebook’s Head of Accessibility Mike Shebanek will share some useful tips on how to make your Facebook posts more approachable so that everyone can easily understand them. These recommendations make navigating social media more attainable not just for people with disabilities, but many others, including the elderly.

• Some tips on how to make your Facebook posts more accessible:
• Use plain language and shorter sentences as well as upper and lower case (instead of all capital letters) to make it easier for people with cognitive and learning disabilities to read. 
• Capitalize the first letter of each word when you use hashtags – it’s easier to read and enables screen readers used by people who are blind to pronounce hashtags properly. (e.g. #BestFriendEver instead of #bestfriendever).
• Each emoji has a matching text description that’s spoken by screen readers for the blind. For example, this emoji 👍🏻 is spoken as “thumbs up.”  Avoid creating emoji or emoticons with text (such as  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). These are hard for many people to read or understand, and screen readers have difficulty describing their meaning.
• Add alternative text descriptions for photos you share, also known as alt text. These descriptions are necessary for people who rely on screen readers and other similar assistive technology when using Facebook.
•  Include a text transcript with your audio recordings and videos.

MORE ABOUT MIKE SHEBANEK:

Mike Shebanek heads Accessibility at Facebook. He has over 30 years of experience in the tech industry and a has a passion for Accessibility and digital inclusion. He was product manager for the original iMac computer and iPad and led the creation of the VoiceOver screenreader and Accessibility features on Mac computers, the iPhone, and iPad. He has led Accessibility at several high-tech companies including Apple, Yahoo, and Verizon Media and also founded several pioneering industry-wide projects to promote Accessibility and inclusion such as Teach Access, the Disability Collection, and XR Access. He holds several technology patent sand serves as Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors at the LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco.