5 Easy Tips To Make Your Bookstagram Account More Accessible

I’m not going to lecture you on why you should make your Bookstagram account more accessible. Instead, I’m going to give you 5 really easy ways you can make your account more accessible so you can reach more people! Start doing them now or slowly break your old habits and start new ones.

Get Rid of the Special Characters and Fonts

You 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 it's 𝒸𝓊𝓉ℯ to 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 your tweets and usernames 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖜𝖆𝖞. But have you 𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙙 to what it 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 with assistive technologies like 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓬𝓮𝓞𝓿𝓮𝓻? pic.twitter.com/CywCf1b3Lm

— Kent C. Dodds (@kentcdodds) January 9, 2019

I don’t have any visual disabilities but I’ve been struggling to attempt to read the cute fonts in captions lately.

What’s more important to you? Font that fits your ‘aesthetic’ or people sticking around? If people can’t read your captions, they will unfollow or choose not to follow.

Space Out Blocks of Text

Instagram Line Break Generator

There’s something daunting about a GIANT block of text. It affects most people. That’s why when you’re reading online (whether it’s a news article, something on Buzzfeed, or even a blog), you’ll see the text broken up into many little paragraphs. Many people will not read something online if it’s just a solid block of text.

When writing up your captions, break it up. Use the tool linked above to help with the with spacing in your captions.

Include image description in caption or use Alt Text

Image description and Alt Text allows users with a screen reader to use Instagram easily.

Image description is typed into a picture’s caption at the end. It looks something like: [Image ID: copy of Illuminae on a table next to a cup of coffee] The upside to this method is it helps others who don’t use a screen reader figure out what’s in a picture by reading the caption. The downside is it takes up your caption. If you write a lot in your captions, this might not be the option for you.

Another method is using Alt Text. Users have the option of describing their photo when they’re first uploading it. Details from Instagram are here.

Use Camel Case on Hashtags

Camel Case is the writing out phrases without spaces & capitalizing the first letter of each word. You’ll use it when writing out your hashtags. It simply makes the hashtags easier to read.

Don’t: #acursesodarkandlonely

Do: #ACurseSoDarkAndLonely

Closed Captions

Many people watch IG stories on mute. I do it all the time at work when I’m on breaks. No captions with you just talking to the camera? I’m moving on.

IG is slowly rolling out captions for stories. You’ll see it as a sticker available in your stories. As usual, it’s rolling out in phases. I’ve noticed when things are being rolled out or in beta, they are (typically) available to Business or Creator accounts first.

Don’t have it yet? There are other apps that can help or you can manually add closed captions yourself to your stories.

What suggestions do you have about Bookstagram & accessibility?

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