Like many aspects of accessibility, using visuals in your social media content can make things more accessible for some people and less accessible for others.
When I say ‘visuals’, I mean anything that’s not text-based. For social media posts, that’s usually images, video and emojis.
There have been a lot of useful posts online about accessibility problems with visual content recently. But it’s made a few people make commitments about not using visuals. Here’s why you should not stop using visual content.
Visual content can improve accessibility
Visuals can be really powerful. They can help people understand complicated ideas.
Using some visuals, like emojis can change your tone of voice. They can make your content seem friendlier and less formal.
Visual content can make your messages quicker, clearer and easier to understand, especially for people who learn visually.
It can also be really important for people who:
- are neurodivergent
- have a cognitive impairment
- have limited energy
- are in pain
- experience visual stress
Visual content might create accessibility issues
Visual content which is not used in an accessible way excludes visually impaired people and screen reader users (not all screen reader users are visually impaired). It may also exclude other disabled people.
Inaccessible visual content stops us from understanding your posts, makes your messages confusing and leaves us feeling left out. And it can stop us from:
- engaging with your posts
- trusting your brand
- buying what you’re selling
It damages your reputation and it could create legal risk if you’ve ignored accessibility legislation.
Making visual content accessible
This guidance is for social media content, but you can also apply most of it to content on web pages.
Images
The goal with images is to always make them as accessible as possible, to as many people as possible, as an image and then add image descriptions where necessary for screen reader and magnification users.
It’s great to post photos of what you’re doing, but try to make them as simple as possible. Avoid really cluttered photos with lots going on. Concentrate on showing one action at a time. It’s better to post several simple photos than one complicated one.
Some platforms favour images of text. If you choose to use text in an image, remember that screen reader users will not be able to access it, and that it might pixelate when magnification users enlarge it. To make sure nobody is excluded, you need to repeat that text in your post. It could be in the post body, or in a separate image description.
To make the text in your image as accessible as possible, choose an easily readable font like Public Sans or Atkinson Hyperlegible.
Check your colour contrast ratios to make sure text is easy to read. It's best not to overlay text on a photo or other complex image, because text background will have a variety of different colour contrasts within one visual. Aim for light text on dark backgrounds, or dark text on light backgrounds. Aim for a contrast ratio of 3:1 between text and background. Check contrast ratios using a colour contrast checker.
Describe the images you use. Follow this guidance about writing image descriptions.
If your image is a quote, which you’ve already repeated in the body text of your post, say so. Don’t leave users guessing whether they missed anything.
Videos
You need to make sure that everything shown on screen is described. So, make sure any text shown in the video is also announced in the audio or put in the video description.
Give videos a short description, much like an image description, to cover who’s talking, what they look like and what they’re doing. Add this information to your post body so that more people can access it.
Add descriptive transcripts to your videos. These need to include the audio and describe any visuals not already announced in the audio.
Remember that you also need to add captions to videos for D/deaf and hard of hearing users, and for people watching them in busy or quiet spaces. Use off-white text on a dark background. It’s really important to use standard captions rather than karaoke style captions. Captions that highlight one word at a time are really hard to follow.
Emojis
Using a lot of emojis can be overwhelming for people with learning disabilities and cognitive impairments. They interrupt the flow of your message visually, and overusing emojis makes things difficult to read for everyone.
Emojis are read out by screen reading software. Every single one. Every single time. If you use emojis between words or as punctuation, screen reader users get a sentence like this example from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB):
This clapping hands is clapping hands what clapping hands screen clapping hands reader clapping hands users clapping hands hear clapping hands when clapping hands you clapping hands over-use clapping hands emojis clapping hands.
Hear a screen reader announce everything in this post by RNIB on LinkedIn.
Don’t use emojis as bullet points. Remember that screen readers read the unicode names for emojis. That means that emoji descriptions announced by screen readers may not match the image you thought you chose, which could give a very strange introduction to your bullet list item. These are some common emojis with potentially unintended meanings:
😪 I’ve definitely used this to mean sad face. Its unicode name is ‘sleepy face’. That tear is not coming from smiley dude's eye.
💨 You could be forgiven for thinking this is meant to be a gust of wind or maybe even a fart. Its unicode name is ‘dashing away’.
🚨 Sometimes this is used as klaxon or warning. Its unicode name is ‘police car light’.
🚩 This is often used as a red flag. Its unicode name is ‘triangular flag’.
You can check the unicode names for emojis using the technical information listed for each emoji on Rose Newell's emoji finder.
The most accessible bullets are HTML unordered lists, but many social media platforms do not allow HTML formatting. So the next best thing is to use individual bullets. These are created when you press option + 8 on a Mac, or use Alt + 0149 on Windows. They are announced by screen reading software as ‘bullet’, rather than ‘bullet list, item’, but they’re better than some alternatives like the dash, which can be read as ‘minus’.
You can use emojis, but use them sparingly. Use them at the end of paragraphs or posts. Try to use no more than one emoji at the end of a paragraph, and not every paragraph.
Avoid typing out emoticons (like <3). Screen reading software will announce all the different characters rather than a useful description. If you’re using an emoji in a reply on social media, put it at the end of the reply, and check that it means what you think it means.
If you do use emojis, check their colour contrast with both a light theme and a dark theme. Some emojis do not work well with dark themes. For example, chess pawn ♟️, heavy plus sign ➕ and musical note 🎵 are invisible in dark theme.
Remember that visually impaired users who do not use screen readers are not read the name of emojis. Without the name, people may struggle to identify details in complex emojis, for example 🤼 (people wrestling), 🧆 (falafel) and 🌃 (night with stars). As well as using emojis sparingly, use only simple emojis where details are large, clear and cannot be mistaken for other things.
Never use emojis to replace words.
Find out more about making content accessible
For a deep dive into what makes content accessible, join Content Design Ireland’s accessible content design course.
Notes about updates to this blog post
This blog post was updated on 30 December 2025 to:
- include more information about emoji issues for users with cognitive impairments and intellectual disabilities, and for visually impaired users who do not use screen readers
- correct some emoji names
- link to Rose Newell's emoji finder instead of EmojiPedia
The link change is because EmojiPedia is out of date and the Unicode emoji list is very slow to load. Rose Newell's emoji finder has been made in a much more accessible and sustainable way than EmojiPedia or the Unicode emoji list, with everything available from one page. Links to other sources are provided here for information only.