{"id":19228,"date":"2023-04-25T22:05:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T02:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/?p=19228"},"modified":"2026-03-19T06:22:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T10:22:55","slug":"how-to-add-alt-text-to-social-media-posts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/2023\/how-to-add-alt-text-to-social-media-posts\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Add Alt Text to Social Media Posts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        How to Add Alt Text to Social Media Posts\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<p>Alternative text, also known as alt text, is a short description of an image that is read by screen readers. With social media becoming an increasingly integral part of our daily lives, it&#8217;s important to consider the accessibility of our content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are three key reasons why you should start adding alt text to your social media posts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Accessibility<\/strong>: Adding alt text to social media posts makes them more accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Furthermore, providing context of the image ensures that everyone can understand the content you are sharing, regardless of their abilities.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Discoverability<\/strong>: Alt text can help social media algorithms better understand and categorize your content. This can improve the visibility of your post in search results, which can ultimately increase its reach and drive more traffic to your account.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Engagement<\/strong>: Improved accessibility means more people can enjoy your content. This will directly improve your engagement rate \u2014 that is, it may lead to an increase of comments, shares, or likes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Now that you&#8217;re convinced of the importance of adding alt text, read on to learn how to do so on the four most popular social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"instagram\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Instagram<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Tap the &#8220;+&#8221; icon to create a new post. Select the image you to post and edit it as you normally would.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After you&#8217;ve finished editing your image, tap on <strong>Advanced Settings<\/strong> at the bottom of the screen.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Scroll until you see the <strong>Write Alt Text<\/strong> option and tap on it \u2014 a text box will appear where you can write a description of your post (you can add a description to each image in a carousel post)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After you&#8217;ve finished writing your alt text, tap on <strong>Done<\/strong> to save it<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"facebook\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Facebook<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span class=\"x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lkfr7t x1lbecb7 xo1l8bm xzsf02u\">Click\u00a0<b>Photo\/Video\u00a0<\/b>at the top of your Feed.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lkfr7t x1lbecb7 xo1l8bm xzsf02u\">Select the photo you want to add.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lkfr7t x1lbecb7 xo1l8bm xzsf02u\">Hover over the photo and click <b>Edit<\/b>.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lkfr7t x1lbecb7 xo1l8bm xzsf02u\">The automatically generated text will be shown on the left side of your photo. Click\u00a0<b>Override generated alt text\u00a0<\/b>to edit it.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lkfr7t x1lbecb7 xo1l8bm xzsf02u\">Write your alt text in the box.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span class=\"x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs xlh3980 xvmahel x1n0sxbx x1lkfr7t x1lbecb7 xo1l8bm xzsf02u\">To save your alt text, click\u00a0<b>Save<\/b>\u00a0in the bottom left.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"twitter\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Twitter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Click on the <strong>Tweet compose<\/strong> button and attach your photo(s).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To insert descriptive text, click <strong>Add description <\/strong>(you can add a description to each image in a tweet).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After you&#8217;ve finished writing your alt text, click the <strong>Done<\/strong> button.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"linkedin\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Linkedin<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Click <strong>Start a post<\/strong> at the top of your LinkedIn timeline and select the image you would like to upload.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click <strong>Alt.Text<\/strong> and write your descriptive text<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>After you&#8217;ve finished writing your alt text, click the <strong>Save<\/strong> button.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Congratulations \u2014 You just made the digital world a little bit more accessible for everyone! If you&#8217;re interested in learning more about web accessibility, check out our short self-guided workshop:<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-buttons is-content-justification-center is-layout-flex wp-container-core-buttons-is-layout-16018d1d wp-block-buttons-is-layout-flex\"><div class=\"wp-block-button\"><a class=\"wp-block-button__link wp-element-button \" href=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webworkshops\/accessibility-training\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Web Accessibility Workshop<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alternative text, also known as alt text, is a short description of an image that is read by screen readers. With social media becoming an increasingly integral part of our daily lives, it&#8217;s important to consider the accessibility of our content. There are three key reasons why you should start adding alt text to your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[369,390,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-carleton-cms","category-keep","category-rewrite"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21422,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19228\/revisions\/21422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/webservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}