Twitter launches new initiatives to promote inclusivity for persons with disabilities
It has been thirty years since we got the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which guarantees access to jobs, public accommodations, government services, public transportation, and communication.
Today, the inclusiveness landscape looks very different. Services, jobs, and information are tied to technology; technology that may not always be accessible to people with disabilities. In a welcome move yesterday, Twitter announced that it is taking steps to make the platform friendlier for the disabled community.Â
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From internal programs and policies to the platform’s user interface, Twitter intends on promoting greater accessibility, tooling, and advocacy across all of its products.Â
In a blog post, product lead Kayvon Beykpour, says, “We’re introducing two new teams we’re building to focus on this work: 1) the Accessibility Center of Excellence and 2) the Experience Accessibility Team, which will focus specifically on the features and products on Twitter.â€
Twitter New Accessibility Center for Excellence will work closely with internal teams to make the company more accessible through office design and marketing communications strategies, to legal and policy standards, and more.Â
The new Experience Accessibility Team will work with product development teams on new and existing features and products, providing resources and tools to promote greater accessibility on the platform. The Experience Accessibility Team will work in conjunction with the Accessibility Center for Excellence to enable better identification and addressal of accessibility gaps throughout the product development cycle.
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The company has already begun hiring to bring its accessibility vision to life and is also expects to roll out auto captions for audio and video by 2021. These initiatives will lay the ground work for Twitter’s future investments in media accessibility. The company has also partnered with external groups to collect feedback from people with disabilities through interviews, surveys, and remote usability studies of new prototypes.Â
What Does This Mean for Marketers?
Little changes make a difference in making brand experiences more accessible for consumers with disabilities. Marketers and advertisers on the platform can reach a wider consumer base as Twitter makes media more accessible.Â
Inclusive design and media will connect brands with a large and endlessly diverse array of consumers and provide marketers with the opportunity to become advocates for inclusive social media.Â
Will the content creation process change for marketers? Not significantly. If you’re already practicing inclusive design, you can easily extend your reach and cast a wider net.Â
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A 2018 survey by Facebook found that over 30% of people face at least one of the following challenges: seeing, hearing, speaking, organizing thoughts walking, or grasping with hands.Â
Worse still, non-inclusive content and experiences tend to push people away. And it is not always easy to pinpoint when that is happening. Excluded web visitors often do not complain:Â 71%Â will just leave.Â
Marketing on an accessible social media platform means recognizing that people have unique needs and that information is consumed in different ways by various people. In 2020, that is just good marketing.
Over the past few months, we have witnessed first-hand how technology can facilitate powerful social experiences. So, social media accessibility and inclusion for those with disabilities is just as important now as in the early days of the ADA. As marketers, we must strive to keep accessibility to opportunities open to everyone through more responsible content creation and advocacy.