Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

How to Make Your Hashtags More Reader-Friendly

Lifehacker: “Communicating in the language of hashtags is an annoyingly universal aspect of social media. But if you’re using hashtags on your Instagram posts, tweets, or Facebook status updates, you should make sure they’re readable for people with visual and cognitive disabilities.Hashtags weren’t designed to be easily read. They’re basically a tool for cataloguing content on the internet, marketing, or making cheesy jokes. But when you create a monstrosity of a hashtag, squeezing words together without spaces or punctuation, you’re creating something that can be impossible to decipher. If you really feel the need to create a long hashtag, capitalize the first letter of each word. A hashtag like #comeforlivemusicstayforbeer is easier to read when it’s written out like #ComeForLiveMusicStayForBeer. As The Bureau of Internet Accessibility points out, people who require screen readers—software programs that help visually impaired users read on-screen text—and those who have dyslexia will benefit from this easy fix. If your hashtags are smashed together like some long-winded portmanteau, it’ll likely confuse a screen reading program so that it reads out your hashtag like one word—in other words, gibberish. Likewise for people with dyslexia. Capitalizing each word makes your tags more readable for everyone who encounters your post…”

Sorry, comments are closed for this post.