A panel at the November #SocialGov Summit where the Department of Labor’s ePolicyWorks team announced the goal to organize new social media accessibility tools and best practices to meet emerging challenges. (Image courtesy of GSA)
Guest post by Mario Damiani, Office of Disability Employment Policy at the Department of Labor
As we wrap up the year and start planning our New Year’s resolutions, may I suggest you add one more goal to your list? Join the #SocialGov Accessibility Working Group and contribute to the development of a Social Media Accessibility Toolkit focused on inclusivity, usability and content strategies to help us all do our jobs a little better.
We’re compiling simple tips to help you integrate accessibility into your social media protocols as you develop them initially, rather than spending valuable time and energy coming up with accessibility “fixes” after the fact.
For example, when posting video on a social media platform, don’t just rely on automated captioning features for your content; make certain that your video is captioned properly, or that you’ve linked to a full transcript.
Following November’s #SocialGov Summit on accessibility and inclusivity, Scott Horvath, Web and Social Media Chief for U.S. Geological Survey, curated a list of key takeaways from the event. Scott also collected best practices from social media managers across government, who had contributed to a shared Hackpad page, and presented those findings at DigitalGov University’s “Making Social Media Accessible: What You Can Do Today” webinar.
In addition, the ePolicyWorks initiative at Department of Labor’s Office of DisabilityEmployment Policy (ODEP) brings more attention to accessibility, usability, and universal design concepts.
Building on these efforts, we’d like to invite you to join us and our partners at GSA in our #SocialGov Accessibility Working Group to continue that dialogue and work with other agencies, partners and developers to find solutions to some of the accessibility issues related to social media, and to help identify and share best practices.
Let’s work together to create a tool-by-tool social media guide to help incorporate accessibility into our federal-wide content strategies to ensure the information constituents need is communicated to them when and how they need it. And making content accessible doesn’t have to be an overwhelming burden.
If you’re interesting in joining the Working Group and/or looking for ways to better communicate with your communities, including individuals with disabilities, please contact me at ePolicyWorks@dol.gov.
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3 comments
Peter - seorimícuaro says:
January 20, 2013 at 12:12 am (UTC -5 )
Very interesting idea, that communication is for everyone regardless of the situation you are in is very important. Support this inicitiva.
Maksudur Rahman Khan says:
January 19, 2013 at 7:30 am (UTC -5 )
Hello, I am a person who provides electrical services in canada. I have read this article. in words, it is amazing. I will visit your blog regularly. Thanks.
Daniel Bevarly says:
January 2, 2013 at 10:01 am (UTC -5 )
Three important components that must be included in developing and scaling Social Media Accessibility Toolkit and/or solutions to promote online governance: Standards, Practices and Processes. A little more insight here: http://www.bevarly.com/?p=1369