Social media for people with disability

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Social media allows anyone with internet access to connect with other people and publish their own content. Through it, we receive a wealth of information and interaction that allows us to keep up important relationships and get things done.

However, for people with a disability such as a hearing, sight or mobility impairment, social media websites and applications have their own barriers.

In late 2011, Media Access Australia undertook research to determine how accessibility issues found in each of the most popular social media tools could be overcome. Funded by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), the SociAbility: social media for people with a disability review was published in 2012, enabling all users to have equal access to the inclusion which social media allows.

Yet the social media landscape changes rapidly and some tools decline or disappear, others add useful new features, and some new tools surge ahead in popularity out of nowhere. So Media Access Australia updated all of our information on social media in 2016, and the information below is still current in 2017.

The result is this page and all of the links within, where you’ll find the latest updated details on social media tools, their accessibility issues, and how best to overcome accessibility challenges using a variety of web and mobile solutions.

Here you will find up-to-date accessibility support for today’s most popular social media tools including:

This information can be accessed via the menu links provided above.

Our original ground-breaking research that was published in 2012, and adopted by the US government for its social media policy, can also be downloaded in report form.

Download the original report:


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