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Inclusive Marketing for Libraries

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Public libraries are a safe space, open and accessible to all walks of life, offering a variety of services and programs to enhance the community. Your library’s social media and marketing efforts should reflect that inclusivity! Take the extra steps to ensure your content is accessible to everyone. Once you recognize the small things that you can do to make your content more accessible, it’ll become routine to your process and will make a huge difference to your audience.

Tips for Graphics

Whether you’re working with a graphic designer or creating something yourself, always try to be mindful of colors and color contrast. Don’t use bright colors and make sure there’s sufficient color contrast between text and background to improve readability for people with visual impairments. If you’re ever not sure, you can use this free tool that checks contrast.

Any graphics posted on social media or included in email marketing should always include alt-text so people using screen readers can understand what’s depicted. Essentially, the alt-text is a brief description of the image that will be read by assistive tech to provide information about the image’s purpose to the reader. That’s why the text shouldn’t just relay what the image contains, but provide context into how it relates to page content. It’s best to keep the description short and straight-forward. There’s no need to say “image of” or “picture of” because the screen reader will relay that information, but do specify if it’s a logo or illustration. It can take a little practice to get alt-text right, but this guide from Harvard can be helpful in learning what works best and what to avoid when using alt-text.

As for the content of your images, try to always show a variety of people reflecting different ethnicities, abilities, ages, and genders. Two great resources for royalty-free stock photos that offer more diversity are Unsplash and Pexels.

Tips for Writing

Using inclusive and plain language is key for the content on your website, email marketing, or social media to be accessible to all. Use gender-neutral terms, person-first language, and avoid language that could be considered offensive or discriminatory. Writing in “plain language” means that you’re writing for a general audience to understand your material, which increases the ability for people with cognitive or intellectual disabilities to access what your library has to offer. Try writing clearly in short sentences without jargon. Reference these five steps to plain language when you get stuck.

Tips for Video

All videos on your website or created for social media should include closed captioning for people with hearing impairments. Not only will this be more accessible to them, but it also helps anyone else who might be scrolling in a public place (without sound) consume your content by reading the captions. Luckily, most social media platforms will have a feature that you can toggle on to automatically generate closed captioning. If that’s not an option, check out this guide for how to easily add them.

There are many ways to make your library’s marketing more inclusive and the internet is an ever-evolving landscape. That’s why organizations like Accessible Social are extra helpful in sharing best practices and free resources for creating accessible social media content. As long as you know your audience, and are always mindful of representing different perspectives and a diverse community, you’re on the right track!

The NJ State Library and Talking Book and Braille Center will also be closed on Monday, February 17, 2025 for Presidents Day.
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