Accessibility and alt text on social media

Alt text on social posts… It’s something that we’ve been - ashamedly - avoiding. We know it’s best practice when it comes to accessibility, and we also know that it significantly impacts SEO. 

Until now, unless specifically asked by a client, we weren’t adding alt text to our social posts. This came down to two main reasons.

• Our scheduling software didn’t allow it.

• It’s time-consuming, and we didn’t have that additional time built into our packages. 

In 2024 we’re calling ourselves out on our bullshit, and the above excuses are at the top of the list to tackle. As a result, from the start of March, all of our social clients will have alt text added to their posts. 

There are two ways we’re achieving this, without having to increase our prices.

• We’ve switched to Sked Social for our scheduling software, and this allows us to add alt text to images (along with a whole heap of incredible features we didn’t have access to previously). 

• We’ve started paying for ChatGPT 4.0, which means we can upload images to the platform and have it write the image descriptions faster, and more accurately than our human brains ever could. 

While the accessibility side of things won’t have a direct impact on client results, we’re proud to know that our accounts will be a welcoming place for visually impaired folk. As far as the SEO side of things goes, we’re excited to see the impact that it has on reach. 

Here’s to continual improvement, and making our spaces (online or IRL) accessible for all.