Could Instagram Stories Be More Accessible?
Instagram has recently improved accessibility on images posted in the feed but what about stories?
At Inktrap we recently have been stepping up our focus on accessibility. We’ll hold our hands up and say we haven’t always had accessibility at the forefront of our design and development process.
Since making ourselves familiar with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), we’ve found that we understand what is needed to ensure that our work meets at least the AA accessibility standard.
With this new-found knowledge about how we can make digital interactions more accessible, I’ve noticed that I’ve begun interrogating all digital spaces I interact with. Whether that’s a website or an app, I’ve begun questioning it all.
Recently while creating an image to post to my Instagram story, I couldn’t help but think the text that I overlaid on my image might not have enough contrast to be accessible.
This set off a chain of questions about how else have my stories in the past failed in terms of accessibility.
If you’re not aware, recently Instagram added the ability to add alt tags to images that you post in your feed. An Alt Tag is something that is used in development where you can add a description of an image, this then means a screen reader can go through the code used to create the website and explain to the user what is being displayed on the screen if they are unable to see it.
This is a great start and works well for images in the feed but as Instagram stories become more popular, and with around 500 million users of stories per day already, the probability of users with accessibility issues being affected will naturally increase too.
Globally the number of people who are visually impaired is estimated to be around 285 million, and 39 million are blind. Instagram could potentially be excluding half of its user base. As well as 466 million people in the world who are deaf or hard of hearing, which is then nearly all of Instagrams user base.
So how can we make it better for those who have visual or hearing impairments? Obviously, we can dream up all different features and ideas that Instagram could build, but what can we do now with what we’ve already got on the platform?
Adding captions to videos
When recording videos for Instagram stories you may be in the moment and ever so eager to share what’s going on, but slow down a minute. Have you considered what it would be like for someone who can’t hear fully or at all? If you are able to hear, set your audio to mute and run through Instagram stories and see how many of your friends and influencers rely on audio-only. You’ll soon realise how your audio content can instantly exclude people.
For those who are hearing impaired, you can simply make your content inclusive by adding captions to the stories. If you have particularly long videos, such a talking to the camera you can use transcript apps such as Cliptomatic and Caption This.
Check your contrast
Adding text to your videos is really helpful for those who may have a hearing impairment, but you still need to consider those who have a visual impairment.
When we choose the colour for our text as well as the background that the text sits on it’s really important that we chose colours that work well together. Currently, Instagram doesn’t have clear or obvious built-in accessibility colour checker—Side note: There is some form of functionality that changes text colour from back to white but it’s difficult to know what this is based on. So if you’re working at Instagram and know more about this get in touch!
Below I’ve collected a set of examples from Vision Express that shows how colours of the rainbow appear to those with specific colour blindness. If you do not have colourblindness you will be able to see how difficult the colours of the rainbow become hard to distinguish between each other.
A fail-safe approach when adding text to your stories would be to use white and black. As soon as you start looking at shades, you do run the risk of making it difficult for those who are colourblind to access your content.
Creating content that is accessible to everyone is super important, but the responsibility must not all be on us. Those who provide platforms for us to produce and share content on must do more to make it easier for everyone to create accessible content. I’m sure the Instagram team are focused on making their platform inclusive and have ideas and features in the pipeline. So until these features become active, let’s make sure we all do our bit to be inclusive when we post online.
How do you ensure your social media content is accessibile and inclusive? Is this something that is new to you or not considered before? What more can we do? Share your thoughts here or via our twitter, we’re @InktrapDesign.
