Hashtags are an integral part of social media making your content more discoverable, helping you reach new audiences as well as bringing together communities of people interested in a particular topic.
But did you know hashtags can be made more accessible?
Most hashtags are made up of a combination of multiple words which don’t feature any spaces. This can make it hard to recognise where one word ends and another one starts. It’s why each individual word of a hashtag should be capitalised. Known as camel case, this simple change to how you write hashtags immediately makes your posts more inclusive.
Take this example. #accessstatements and #inclusivedesign should be written as #AccessStatements and #InclusiveDesign which instantly makes them easier to read.
Accessible hashtags help:
- Screen readers read the words in a hashtag individually. As hashtags don’t have spaces, screen readers are unable to detect if a hashtag is made up of multiple words so will run all the words together, often into a senseless mess. Capitalising each word indicates each word is separate ensuring screen readers are more likely to read the hashtag as intended.
- People with dyslexia or cognitive disabilities who may experience problems identifying the patterns that make up words and the relationships between them. Capitalising the first letter of each word makes them a lot easier to read.
- Improve readability for everyone including people with low literacy, people whose first language isn’t the language of the hashtag, and those who are simply in a rush.
Also, think carefully about where you put hashtags in your text. Having them appear randomly in the middle a sentence interrupts the flow when it’s being read out loud by a screen reader. It’s much better to group them together at the end of your caption.
Currently, social media platforms don’t automatically use camel case for hashtags, and frustratingly they automatically appear in lowercase, which means you need to make a concerted effort to capitalise each word. Hopefully, as more people become aware about social media accessibility, the platforms will do something proactive to make all hashtags accessible by default.
In the meantime, just remember, if you don’t use hashtags properly, then you are excluding audiences with visual impairments and making it difficult for people to engage fully with your social media content.