Why alt text in football should be a wake-up call for education social media
What do Manchester United and lots of universities have in common?
Inaccessible social media.
In early May, Manchester United Football Club tweeted about Juan Mata García, asking its followers to read the alt text. In the functionality designed to describe imagery for assistive technology, their social media team shared a joke about how great the player is.
And, as you might expect, Twitter users were angry.
But what is alt text, why should you be using it - and why did Man Utd receive such a backlash?
Digital accessibility
According to the World Health Organisation, over 1 billion people across the globe are living with some kind of disability around the world. When we’re using digital channels to communicate, as we would do in person, we need to make sure we’re including everyone by providing accommodations. In public channels like social media, that should mean that we’re using features like alt text as standard practice, so that anyone can engage with what we’re creating.
By alt text, we mean a text-based description of an image or graphic you’ve shared online. Users with visual impairments or blindness will use assistive technology to describe images to them when they’re scrolling online—and if you miss out alt text, these aids will often default to a simple ‘image’.
For lots of UK education organisations, this shouldn’t be news. In 2018, new regulations came into force that required public sector organisations—like universities—to ensure their websites were fully accessible to all users, including alt text for images.
Social media exists in a fuzzy grey area with this legislation, though. While the channels are key digital presences for organisations, unlike websites or intranets, they’re rented space, not owned. So, in some cases, functionality may lag behind or social media teams may feel pressure to follow a platform-based trend, rather than create accessible content. This issue can be compounded by the often small sizes of social media teams in education: if, for example, you’re a team of one managing content across seven platforms, it can be hard to keep up-to-date on the latest best practice.
But Man Utd, as a football club, isn’t subject to these regulations—and I’m pretty sure their channels have a strong team behind them. And yet, scrolling through Man Utd’s Twitter feed, this isn’t the only piece of inaccessible content. For one, they regularly use alternative characters, which are often illegible to assistive technology.
And in the education sector, these mistakes are happening too. From videos without subtitles to graphics with illegible text, there’s a whole heap of content that our sector’s audiences can’t engage with.
This isn’t a joke
By using alt text in this way—to hide a message for their community, rather than to help people to access their content—is more than just poor professional practice. It’s ableist.
Organisations that prioritise a privileged group in this way create barriers to inclusivity and are likely to make the people in your community who need this functionality feel excluded.
Posts like this show either:
Ignorance of why alt text exists and needs to be used
Disregard for the people who need alt text to engage with online content.
Whichever reason is behind this choice, it shows that they’re not thinking about who their audiences are, beyond two-dimensional followers. I hope though that the team are taking some time to consider their actions and how they can improve in future.
Education organisations aren’t immune to inaccessible posts, or the ignorance/disregard that underpins such work. And, as a sector, education prides itself on inclusivity and equity. So why are organisations excluding people who have a long-term illness, disability or medical condition from engaging on social media?
Often, it’s because they’re chasing new audiences, new students, new reputational gains—without thinking of the needs of the existing community they’ve built or those they want to attract. In both groups, you’re likely to be speaking to someone who will use assistive technology in some form. So digital accessibility should be a core part of your content development, including in social media.
Taking ownership
For lots of people (including me as an individual and Pickle Jar Communications as a whole), we’re learning to become better at digital accessibility. It’s an ongoing process as new channels, technology and trends develop. While we all make mistakes, it’s important to acknowledge and learn from them.
…which as far as I know, Manchester United have yet to do here.
And if you want to do the same and improve your digital accessibility, get in touch to see how we can help you.
