Accessibility of Social Media
Especially in times like the pandemic social media has become more important than ever. To keep informed and stay in touch with your loved ones. Unfortunately, some of them are lacking in inclusiveness and accessibility.
Disclaimer: This is not a list of all social media apps there are, just the ones that are most popular among my circles in Europe. I tested the apps myself on 02/21 mostly on an Android device, and if a Desktop Version was available, I tested them on a Mac with Chrome Browser. I was trying to assert also the accessibility of the apps with Androids “Talk Back” feature, but I really struggled with the usage of it in general. The Accessibility level with talk-back usually slightly worse for me compared to the desktop websites used with a screenreader. But on an iOS Device or for someone who is more used to this tooling the accessibility might be different.
It might be that the Apps and Websites have been updated to add or delete features after I have finished testing. Maybe I will add edits to it later on or you can just comment to inform others about the updates.
Clubhouse
Clubhouse is a recently released new social media application which is audio-focused. It currently is still in a very early stage, so it is very likely the accessibility will increase soon with the further development of the application. By the time I am writing this article, the application is still in a relatively closed release phase. Only available for iOS and you need to be invited by another User. The interaction is synchronous via Audio-Chat. The owner of a group-room can decide who is allowed to speak. Attendees of a group can signal the moderator they want to speak.
Desktop Website: Clubhouse does not yet have a web-based equivalent.
Visual Accessibility: The application has a light theme as default, with no dark/high contrast mode available. It is zoomable, if you install the application on an iPad instead of an iPhone, you can stretch the view and see everything a little bigger. Changing the device font-size does not influence the applications font-size. The profile image of the person speaking is highlighted in a different colour, but the contrast of the highlight is not sufficient according to WCAG. If the list of users is very big, its hard to identify who is currently speaking from the people who are currently allowed to speak. When I used it with the voice-over feature of iOS, not all buttons had a meaningful description text, which makes it harder to navigate and understand the meaning of each button.
Audio Accessibility: The quality and loudness of the spoken language are influenced by the users as the speakers' connection, as well as on the setting of the speakers’ microphone sensitivity. The loudness can be influenced by the device's settings. There is no possibility of adding closed live captions or auto subtitles. As there is no video available you can also not read a persons lips. There are no chat or quick reactions available to ask a person to repeat what they said, speak up or change their microphone sensitivity.
It has become more or less the definition of social media. You can share texts, videos and images. On your own profile or within groups. Recently they also implemented a story-feature. These stories can contain videos and mixed media. Facebook has several entries in its help centre around its accessibility features. The interaction is asynchronous.
Desktop Website: Facebook is special to other social media we have currently in use, as it started as a website and not like Instagram or TikTok as a mobile application. Thus it is not the first or oldest social media application. The keyboard accessibility is very high and they also offer keyboard shortcuts for easier navigating between posts and interactions like liking a post. Lighthouse Accessibility Score: 75%
Visual accessibility: Adding an image description is available, but hidden behind the extended image edit options. But Facebook also uses a machine-learning algorithm to detect what is on the picture. This can be disabled by users in their privacy settings. The mobile and desktop applications also offer both a high contrast / dark mode.
Audio accessibility: You can upload a subtitle file (.str) to your uploaded video in various languages. There are no automated subtitles. For Facebooks stories apply the same rules as for Instagrams stories, you can add the subtitles yourself as text to your videos, but it is not machine-readable.
In the early days of Instagram, the application focussed on images with artificial lomo filters. It still mainly focusses on sharing images with optional post texts. But you can also share videos, live videos or so-called stories that can contain videos and mixed media with sound and music. The interaction is asynchronous. There is some advice on increasing text-size in the help-centre, but no further info on accessibility features.
Desktop Website: it focusses only on discovering and does not offer functions for creating content yourself. But you can interact with stories, write messages and share posts via message, as well as comment on posts. Most of the website is navigate able by keyboard, some elements are focusable, but not interactable with the keyboard. Some focusable elements do not have visual highlighting. You can not skip over the stories area, so a user who is not able to use the mouse has to first go through the list of all profiles, who posted stories before they can go to the actual posts. Lighthouse Accessibility Score: 71 %
Visual Accessibility: there are image descriptions for posts available if a user sets them. The description feature is hidden behind the extended image settings. There are no machine-readable texts on shared stories even if they contain written text. You can also not add image descriptions to stories. The mobile app has a dark / high-contrast mode, the website does not offer this. Zooming in is seamlessly possible. Text-size can not be adjusted inside the app itself, it follows the device settings.
Audio Accessibility: There are no automatic subtitles and its also not possible to add an additional subtitle file. Texts can be added optionally to videos, which are then not machine-readable. You also now can send Voice-Messages to other users. There is no hint on how long the voice message is or a possibility to get an auto-subtitle for this. For deaf or hard of hearing users, this content is completely inaccessible.
TikTok
Is a platform for sharing short videos based on mixed media. So you can use static images and add animated effects and music to them or create videos and animations. The interaction on the platform is asynchronous
Desktop Website: Other than Instagram, TikTok offers also features for creators via their web-application. You can upload videos, but without the editing features the mobile application has. The keyboard accessibility is rudimentary, the main interactions e.g. like and comment are non-focusable elements with javascript onClick events and can not be triggered with the keyboard. When using the overlay-view on the desktop application, the focus of the keyboard was stuck behind the overlay and I could not access any of the controls or read the comments. Lighthouse Accessibility Score 47%
Visual accessibility: In the settings, you can turn off videos with flickering images which might be a trigger for people with epilepsy. I was also trying to stop videos from auto-playing inside the app, but it did not work. I was also not able to find a setting for high-contrast /dark mode on desktop and mobile. Zooming in is seamlessly possible.
Audio accessibility: You can not turn off the music and hear only the original video audio, if available. The creator can set the loudness of the music, a viewer can only adjust their device audio. No automatic subtitles or support for uploading .str files. Creators can add subtitles themselves by adding text overlays, but they are not machine-readable.
Featurewise Twitter is most closely to Facebook and started off focussing on text status updates. It has a character limit for text length. You can also share videos and images. Twitter also recently added a stories-feature for sharing videos and mixed media. The interaction is asynchronous, but dependent on your discover settings, you might be able to get a close to real-time interaction.
Desktop Website: the feature set is the same as inside the mobile application. You have full access to create texts, videos and pictures as also send private messages. Twitter offers special shortcuts for keyboards that help to navigate and interact with the posts. Lighthouse Accessibility Score: 75%
Visual Accessibility: Image description texts are prominently placed when posting images and animated gifs. The same applies to twitters new story functionality. It also offers a high contrast / dark mode for both mobile and desktop. Zooming in is easily possible and rearranges the layout. On the mobile app, the font-size settings follow the device settings. Animations can be disabled, as also autoplay of videos. For voice over the #-sign can be set to be pronounced as “Hashtag”
Audio Accessibility: There are no automatic captions or possibilities to upload a .str file to your shared videos. Twitter also experimented with audio-only tweets, but it does not seem to have this feature released for now. Sound-effects can be turned off in the app settings.
Twitch
Video Streaming platform, made for live-streaming and screen sharing. While you stream you can interact with your audience via live-chat which has also moderator roles. Twitch has an accessibility statement where they submit themselves to the WCAG, but will not cover automatic subtitles or filter for flickering images.
Desktop Website: The featureset focusses on discovering content and interacting with the community and the creators. If you want to start a stream yourself, you have to download one of the streaming clients. Twitch offers special keyboard commands to navigate and use the application. Lighthouse Accessibility Score: 88%
Visual Acessibility: Twitch offers a dark / high contrast mode on mobile and desktop applications. The website is seemlesly zoomable. There are description texts the creator can fill in for their profile and every stream has a title.
Audio Accessibility: The creator decides how they mixtune their voice-over with the game-sounds. As audience you can only adjust your devices sound. Twitch itself does not offer auto subtitles. Depending on the streaming client a creator is using, you can send additional live captions in specific formats, that are also used for TVs. Also depending on the used streaming client, you can also allow people in your audience to submit live-captions.
Youtube
Like Facebook, youtube started as a web platform and the mobile application followed a couple of years later. It is a platform for sharing videos, also allows live streams and sharing status updated with images, short videos, texts and mixed media. The interaction possibilities on videos and shared status updates are asynchronous. Live streams also offer a live-chat with moderator roles. There are several entries in the help-center of YouTubes accessibility features and how to use them.
Desktop Website: Youtube offers special keyboard commands for using the website and shortcuts to skip navigation elements to jump directly into videos. The Video-player also offers keyboard commands for navigating inside the video. The keyboard accessibility is thorough. Lighthouse Accessibility Score: 91%
Visual Accessibility: Dark / high contrast mode available for web and mobile application. Subtitle size and colour can be adjusted, increasing the zoom factor is seamless and changes the layout of the elements. In the mobile app, the font-size follows your display settings. you also can set that the navigation elements of the video player do not disappear, which helps the voice-over feature to always access the navigation.
Audio Accessibility: Youtube allows users to upload .str files and also offers an in-video editor for adding subtitles. It also offers auto-subtitles, which you can then also use to base your subtitles and translations on. The closed captions are also readable via screenreader. On automatically generated subtitles, the screenreader got stuck for me as the text updates it while it is written.
