Addressing the Accessibility of Social Media

Social media platforms are deeply ingrained in society, and they offer many different spaces for people to engage with others. Unfortunately, accessibility barriers prevent people with disabilities from fully participating in these spaces. Social media users commonly post inaccessible media, including videos without captions (which are important for people who are deaf or hard of hearing) and images without alternative text (descriptions read aloud by screen readers for people who are blind). Users with motor impairments must find workarounds to deal with the complex user interfaces of these platforms, and users with cognitive disabilities may face barriers to composing and sharing information. Accessibility researchers, industry practitioners, and end-users with disabilities will come together to outline challenges and solutions for improving social media accessibility. The workshop starts with a panel of end-users with disabilities who will recount their Perspectives of Successes and Barriers. Industry professionals from social media companies (e.g., Facebook and LinkedIn) will detail their Design Process and Implementation Challenges in a panel with questions from attendees. The attendees will share their work and tackle Open Challenges and Future Research Directions. This workshop will forge collaborations between researchers and practitioners, and define high-priority accessibility challenges for social media platforms

Party Face Congratulations! Exploring Design Ideas to Help Sighted Users with Emoji Accessibility when Messaging with Screen Reader Users

Emoji are a popular, expressive form of non-verbal communication. However, people often use emoji in ways that result in confusing or cumbersome screen reader output. We created two accessibility support designs: (1) Preview, which displays a basic text transcript of a message with emoji that a screen reader would narrate, and (2) Alert, which summarises potential accessibility issues caused by emoji within a message. We explored our designs using an online survey and provided participants with the option to edit messages that contained emoji, should they choose to do so. We collected 1508 modified messages from 116 sighted participants and conducted a qualitative analysis of the data to identify the strategies participants used when asked to edit a message for accessibility issues and their appreciation of each design. We found that participants preferred the Preview design over Alert since it allows for subjective interpretations of what constitutes an accessible message. We report sighted users' rewriting strategies (e.g., editing the message to move the emoji to the end) and incorrect assumptions about screen readers that would lead to using textual markers that are incompatible with screen readers. We discuss the design implications for future systems for accessible messaging

Determining the social media factors that influence brand equity: a case of mobile network operations in Zimbabwe

The increased use of the internet in the past number of years has resulted in an increased global use of social media for business purposes and it is likely to continue increasing as the world continues to do business online. Businesses now have the opportunity to generate content related to their brands, products and services, share content, communicate and sell to customers through the social media platforms. The consumers also are generating a lot of online content about businesses, products and services and sharing the content through social media. The increased use of social media in business to promote brands has the potential to enhance the development of brand equity. With the increased use of social media in business in promoting and marketing brands, there was a need to determine the social media factors that influence brand equity, which was the primary purpose of this study. An empirical study was conducted, where the data were collected from Zimbabweans in Harare Province who met the requirements by means of a face-to-face self-administered questionnaire. A positivism research paradigm was used in the study. The study followed a quantitative approach in order to satisfy the research objectives of the study. A descriptive research design and survey research strategy were used in this study. Based on the research results, it was found that the mobile network consumers attach value to the mobile network operators’ businesses and their products and services to which they are exposed through the various social media tools. The study revealed that social media engagement, social media influence, social media trustworthiness, social media cost effectiveness, social media exposure, social media perceived usefulness, social media subjective norms and social media ease of use are the social media factors that primarily influence consumer-based brand equity in terms of brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand associations and perceived brand quality. The mobile network operators need to ensure that their social media platforms appeal to these needs of their customers and followers on social media to create value for their businesses, brands, and products. This is because the consumers tend to rely on the mobile network operators’ social media pages for information about the business, products and services, not only as shared by the mobile network operators, but also shared by other users of social media (the consumers)Business ManagementM. Com. (Business Management