• tl;dr : Emojis Should Not Be Used as Punctuation

Rise Social Media Campaign

Our client approached us to enhance their social media presence, and we quickly identified several improvements that could be implemented with ease. In addition to contributing to design concepts, I took on the responsibility of evaluating the platform’s overall accessibility.

An artful tiling of potential high contrast social media templates for Rise
One of the first steps I took was to create a contrast board using Rise’s existing palette, extending it with colors from a prior impact report I designed for them. This resulted in a more accessible range of color combinations than the original style guide allowed.
Examples of Rise social media posts, comparing the originals posts to the redesign posts that are higher contrast.

Beyond visual accessibility, I recommended key adjustments to improve inclusivity, such as using camel case for hashtags, adding alt text to images, and writing with inclusive language.

One item I assessed was their use of captions, particularly emoji usage. They were using emojis after every sentence and as a way to denote information, like using the calendar emoji to highlight a date.

To a screen reader the name of the emoji is uttered every time. For example, it may be commonplace to use the fire emoji to indicate something “is fire” by repeating it several times - but to screen readers that sounds like “fire fire fire fire fire” - which is more of an alarm and less of a celebratory note (and distinctly not “fire”).

A reference guide I created for comms at Rise to know which colors are high contrast and what level they complied. A comparison screen of the low contrast design to the suggested higher contrast design.

A key reference I like to share with communication teams is the Accessible Social guide by Alexa Heinrich.

Ultimately, the client was pleased to receive concrete guidelines to manage their social presence in a cohesive yet accessible way.

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