A brand creates content for its target audience to inform, educate, or communicate the brand’s ideology or thoughts. While the focus is usually on increasing online engagement and audience retention on their web page, you, as a brand, must first ensure that your content is accessible to your target audience. Let us elaborate. Just imagine that you have planned your content to work across all browsers and devices, but it is still inaccessible and hence frustrating for a significant section of your audience, especially those with physical impairments.
When you consider the communication needs of a wide range of people, you ensure that more people feel included. Accessible communications can not only help you reach a wider audience, but also help build engagement and trust. Hence, it is essential that you consider all possible factors that would make your website or platforms difficult to access for an individual. Here’s how you can go about it.
1. Make your video content accessible
As we know, in the age of the internet, videos are being regularly consumed by many. To create user-friendly and accessible videos that can drastically improve your reach and usability, you must add captions, transcripts, and audio descriptions to it. Also, you can use text that is easy to read along with colours that provide a good contrast, to improve quality. Brut India, for instance, makes videos that are straight forward, have subtitles and an engaging flow, which has made their video content very popular.
2. Keep it short
Gone are the days when long-form content was the only way of giving detailed information to people. Nowadays, the audience prefers quick and short reads that provide high value due to reducing attention spans. People like to skim through content more. Keeping your content short will keep your readers engaged and offer genuine value and a rewarding experience. For example, Airbnb has an interesting way of narrating stories that have global appeal.
3. Add (alt text) to all images
One of the most successful content strategies for engaging your audience is to use visuals to explain a concept. Adding alt text helps the images to be read by assistive technology like screen readers. So, in case an image is not visible, a viewer will be able to read the alt text. More importantly, screen reading tools can read out the alt text, explaining the image to those who are visually challenged. It also helps the Instagram algorithm understand images and reach relevant users.
4. Use camel case hashtags for better accessibility
It’s a known fact that hashtags play a crucial role in bettering reach. They also encourage social media users to explore the content of their interest because it is easy to find information on a theme or specific content with the help of a hashtag. But how do you know whether the hashtags are accessible or not? Capitalising the first letter of each word, which is called ‘camel case’, is a good way of ensuring this. If a hashtag contains all small or capital letters, the screen-readers find it difficult to differentiate the words, creating confusion for those with visual or learning disabilities.
As a brand, it is important for you to ensure that your content is not only accessible, but also inclusive. That will provide your audience with a sense of ease and comfort, and help improve brand loyalty. With an increase in the number of subscribers and followers, you will have to ensure that your content is not only detailed and informative, but also presented in the right way.
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