Barriers and Opportunities to Accessible Social Media Content Authoring

TL;DR

This paper investigates the perceptions and barriers related to accessible social media content creation, revealing that current approaches are insufficient and highlighting the need for increased user awareness and engagement.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into user perceptions of accessible content, identifying gaps in current tools and practices to promote more inclusive social media environments.

Findings

Major platforms' approaches are inadequate for accessibility.

Most users are unaware of accessible practices and benefits.

Barriers include lack of awareness and motivation among users.

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 content remains inaccessible to a part of the population, despite available tools to mitigate this source of exclusion. We sought to understand how people are perceiving these online contents in their networks and how to support tools are being used. To do so, we performed an online survey of 258 social network users and a follow-up interview conducted with 20 of them - 7 of them self-reporting blind and 13 sighted users without a disability. Results show how the different approaches being employed by major platforms are still not sufficient to properly address this issue. Our findings reveal that mainstream users are not 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.