Accessibility Tools and Platforms for your Agency

On March 29th, Twitter introduced a new accessibility tool for making images more accessible to those who are visually impaired. That's not only AWESOME - but it also got us thinking about our own social media planning. Being able to have accessible visual content - whether that be on an internal or external level, collaborative platforms, or social - is pretty important. Especially when you consider how many people you interact with as an agency - coworkers, clients, and your audience on social platforms.Did you know that visual content is 40X more likely to be shared than other forms for content? Visuals are an alive and thriving form of content in today's world. So ensuring that as many people as possible have access, regardless as to what physical limitations they have, from content creation all the way to publishing is a no-brainer. Odds are some of the platforms you're already using have some kind of accessibility tool for those who need it!

Accessibility Tools and Collaborative Platforms

Trello: The task-organizing application allows users to table cards with a variety of colours. Yinou are able to assign colours importance or relevancy, and use them on different task cards accordingly. Colour Blind is a feature that you can enable which assigns patterns which coincide with colours. This way everyone can still have an organized view of their workflow, regardless if they use colours or patterns.For those without colour blindness:

For those with colour blindness:

Slack : This messaging app is the ultimate tool when it comes to collaboration - including accounting for any team members with colour blindness. On the sidebar, when choosing colour themes, included is the option to choose Solanum or Brinjal - depending on the deficiency.

Google Docs : Multiple users are able to collaborate on a single document, so features like voice typing and screen readers create an accessible document for anyone. Additionally, braille support for reading and texting is also available - for both desktop and mobile.

Accessibility Tools and Social Platforms

Twitter : As earlier mentioned, Twitter now allows users the ability to add descriptions to images up to 420 characters - this includes publishers and third-party clients. Those visually impaired will be able to access these descriptions via their assistive technologies (screen readers and braille displays). Twitter also has screen reader support, as well as keyboard shortcuts.

Here's how to enable the new feature.

Facebook : Officially launched on April 4th, Facebook has now launched Automatic alternative text with the help of recognition technology. Those using screen readers for iOS will be able to hear of list of items that might be present in a photo. Before this addition, users with visual impairment would only be able to organize posts by names and dates. The update is currently only available in English, but the Facebook Accessibility Team is working towards other languages, and platforms, as well.

Facebook's mission is to make the world more open and connected. And that goes for everyone. - Facebook

And coming soon...

Microsoft: Microsoft is currently working on a project known as Seeing Al - a research project using computer vision and language processing. This application can describe a persons surroundings, read text, answer questions, and even recognize people's emotions. Seeing Al is available as a smartphone app, or smart glasses via Pivothead. They have not yet released a launch dated.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WP7Id8SxYQ&feature=youtu.be[/embed]

So by the looks of things, there are some pretty cool features for accessibility out there now, and even more on the way!

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