Ensuring your charity’s digital communications are accessible
Digital communications, particularly social media, are becoming increasingly important for charities in reaching both beneficiaries and potential donors. Many grant providers are looking at charities’ social media platforms, and are factoring this into their decision to make grants. However, more grant providers are seeking evidence that charities are making an active effort to drive their fundraising initiatives to become more self-sustaining.
While it may not seem as direct as other forms of communication, digital communications in the form of social media and website content open up valuable opportunities to have conversations with financial supporters. They are a cost-effective way for charities to improve their reputations, reach more financial supporters and therefore succeed in helping more people with their services.
Promoting your mission
Strong social media profiles can demonstrate to grant providers that a charity is worth giving money to. Firstly, social media posts can educate and inform grant providers, potential donors and volunteers about a charity’s mission. For instance, a children’s mentoring charity in York found that many stakeholders did not understand the impact that the charity was having in the local community. A situation replicated in many instances across the sector.
In the case of the York charity, infographics were created for its Instagram presence - representations of information in a graphic format, designed to make data easily understandable. The aim was to educate followers about the charity’s various services, and their benefits to local children and the community.
York, contrary to popular belief, has high rates of poverty, driven by high living costs versus low-paying jobs. After mentoring, many children build confidence, better self-esteem and resilience, and then progress into higher education.
The charity used social media to educate grant providers, potential volunteers and donors and in this way helped to generate a more credible reputation for itself.
Improving public relations
Social media is continuing to grow as a method of contact between charities and their financial supporters, and can therefore play a key role in improving and building relationships with these financial supporters. 40% of social media users expect a response to a message within an hour, while 79% expect a response within 24 hours. Failing to respond in a timely manner can mean that charities lose out on financial support.
Hence the constant monitoring and immediate response to social media messages concerning them is very important for charities, including during the working day when staff are out of the office or away from their desks at home. Also, not having reactive arrangements during evenings and weekends can lead to considerable lost contact opportunities, affecting donations.
But building relationships with financial supporters on social media comes down to more than simply answering messages, and providing valuable and informative content. Just as charities should be considering accessibility in other methods of communication, for example providing braille in postal communications, it’s incredibly important to be inclusive in your digital communications.
When so many charities directly support disabled or vulnerable beneficiaries, it’s absolutely crucial that social media communications are made accessible to them. In failing to be inclusive, you may miss out on opportunities to reach those who could benefit from your charity’s services. Even if your charity’s beneficiaries don’t fall under these categories, surely all charities should be setting an example of inclusivity in their online presence.
But inclusivity is about more than beneficiaries. Potential financial supporters could be excluded from your fundraising activities because they can’t access your social media communications.
It’s easy to assume that everyone has the same experience of social media, when in fact vulnerable or disabled individuals can face significant access issues. There are nearly 2 million people living with sight loss and 11 million people with hearing loss in the UK, while around 1.5 million people have a learning disability. So, those with disabilities make up a significant demographic for potential donors.
But how can we all play our part in making our social media communications accessible? Here are some practical recommendations:
Assistive technology
People with sight loss or learning differences like dyslexia use assistive technology (AT) software to access social media. AT software reads out text on social media posts, and any alternative (alt) text provided for images. There are several ways in which social media posts can be better formatted, to ensure they can be easily read by AT software.
One thing that many social media users overlook is using capital letters in hashtags. Hashtags are commonly used by charities on platforms like Instagram and Twitter to begin fundraising campaigns, such as sponsored runs or other challenges which participants can encourage their friends to join in with.
When hashtags are written in lowercase, AT software can’t identify where each word begins and ends. And for those that don’t use AT software, this can also make hashtags hard to read, leading to confusion and even scandal.
To give just one example, when #nowthatcherisdead trended in 2013 after Margaret Thatcher passed away, Cher fans were horrified, reading the hashtag as #NowThatCherIsDead, rather than #NowThatcherIsDead. Here, it’s not just about inclusivity, it’s about clarity.
Emojis can also present unexpected difficulties for AT software users. Every time AT software encounters an emoji, it reads the entire description for the emoji, slowing down a user’s experience. AT software also reads out punctuation marks such as hashtags and the “at symbol” - @, used for mentioning other users. By placing mentions, hashtags and emojis at the end of your social media communications, you allow users to access your key messages quickly.
Readable web design
When designing your website, accessibility should factor into your decisions regarding colour schemes and fonts. Text with a contrasting background can be read more easily by individuals with dyslexia. The same rule applies to graphics that you might use on social media or in your email communications.
You may want to consider adding a tool to your website that allows users to change font sizes or background colours to suit their individual needs.
Closed captions
Closed captions are becoming increasingly popular on video content, not only due to a drive to increase inclusivity, but also because many non-hearing impaired users watch videos on mute, for example in group settings or in public places. In fact, a recent study found that captioned videos are viewed 40% more than uncaptioned videos.
Closed captions, which can be turned off by the viewer as opposed to being embedded in the video, are not just subtitles for images. They also describe other audio aspects, e.g. certain noises, such as phones ringing or surrounding sounds.
Moreover, closed captions can help you to reach people who are watching in their non-native language, allowing you to spread your charity’s message to an even wider audience. Adding closed captions to videos need not be time consuming, either. Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram all offer auto-generated captions for videos.
Accessible images
Images are an important aspect of website content, embellishing blog posts and case studies. They are also highly useful in increasing engagement on social media posts. There are multiple ways that you can ensure your digital images are accessible. For one, all of your images should include alternative or “alt” text. This is the image description that AT software will read out when it detects an image. This lets a visually impaired user know what an image is, and what it looks like.
Most mainstream social media platforms have a built-in option to add alt text, as do most web content management systems, which are used to host your website content.
When writing alt text for your images, it can be useful to imagine that you’re describing the image to someone over the phone. It only needs to be a short description, around 125 characters, so adding alt text to your social media images is a quick and simple way to improve accessibility.
When sharing statistics, facts or stories online, infographics can be extremely useful. These are popular to use within reports, and they work just as well across digital platforms. Using contrasting colours and easy-to-read fonts can make your infographics more readable for those with dyslexia or ADHD. Evenly spaced fonts like Sans Serif are easily readable. Choose logical formats, such as ordering your content as a list, as opposed to creative formats like random bubbles or shapes.
Growing through inclusivity
Digital is a tool that all charities should be making use of, as it can help you to both fundraise and reach potential beneficiaries. It can help to increase awareness of your mission and impact, and improve your public image and relations. However, failing to make your digital content accessible will get in the way of these objectives. Promoting diversity and inclusion should happen at every level of a charity, including the minute details of online communications. It’s more than good PR - it’s kindness.
