Accessible content for Instagram

Hi dear readers! Thank you for reading with me one more week. I'm pretty sure you were anxious for our continuation of this series about Accessibility for social media. We have talked about Twitter and Facebook and today we turn to Instagram, one of the most popular social media platforms.

There are some people who can't imagine Instagram being one of the social media apps that is accessible to people with visual impairment since it's mostly for sharing images. However, we can say in general that Instagram offers a nice experience for people with visual impairment; when people describe their own images when posting you could say in a way that the image contains some «alternative text».

Even so, same as other social media platforms, we can follow two simple steps so that the experience is more accessible to us all. 

We'll learn how to insert alt. text for Instagram. Instagram does use technology recognition that automatically generates descriptions of the objects for screen readers, it is always best if we can add our own alt. text to our images. 

Once we're done with our post, editing, adding filters and getting to the sweet spot we: 

-Select «Advance configuration».

-Click on «Add Alt. Text».

-Then save. 

Nowadays, mobile phones have general adjustments in which people with disabilities can update their preferences to adjust their needs. Per example, the zoom feature shows itself useful when people cannot read tiny letters or pictures inside an App. Instagram also has a zoom function which helps the visual impairment community. Now for videos inside Instagram, you can utilize the space where the subtitles are for a transcription, including quotes, dialogs and descriptions of the action.

I don't know about you, but I do think lt's as easy as with Twitter and Facebook. I really hope you are enjoying this series as much as I am, unfortunately the next entry will be our last. At least, in terms of accessibility and social media. So don't miss out because we'll end up with LinkedIn. 

We'll be reading each other soon!

With love, 

Ely García.