Authoring accessible media content on social networks

Abstract

User-generated content plays a key role in social networking, allowing a more active participation, socialisation, and collaboration among users. In particular, media content has been gaining a lot of ground, allowing users to express themselves through different types of formats such as images, GIFs and videos. The majority of this growing type of online visual content remains inaccessible to a part of the population, in particular for those who have a visual disability, despite available tools to mitigate this source of exclusion. We sought to understand how people are perceiving this type of online content in their networks and how support tools are being used. To do so, we conducted a user study, with 258 social network users through an online questionnaire, followed by interviews with 20 of them – 7 blind users and 13 sighted users. Results show how the different approaches being employed by major platforms may not be sufficient to address this issue properly. Our findings reveal that users are not always aware of the possibility and the benefits of adopting accessible practices. From the general perspectives of end-users experiencing accessible practices, concerning barriers encountered, and motivational factors, we also discuss further approaches to create more user engagement and awareness.