Accessible Social for Public Media: Move to Include
Project at a Glance
WXXI, an affiliate station of PBS and the flagship station of the Move to Include initiative, wanted resources that empower their team to create social media content that follows digital accessibility best practices. LaVant audited their social media presence and interviewed key stakeholders. LaVant used this information to create a custom social media accessibility playbook, an accompanying workshop, and office hours suited to the unique needs of this particular team. Move To Include later shared these resources with other Move to Include partner stations.
A Team Passionate about Centering Disability Experiences
Move to Include is an award-winning national initiative to promote disability inclusion, representation, and accessibility in public media. Founded and led by WXXI in Rochester, NY, and built on the principle of “Nothing About Us Without Us”, this initiative spotlights the lived experiences of people with disabilities and highlights important issues around disability, including education, healthcare, housing, employment, and more – through television, radio, news, community events, and digital media.
The challenge
Translating Technical Standards into Clear Actions
Digital accessibility best practices, such as the criteria within the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), are highly technical standards and can be difficult to interpret. This can create a real challenge for teams who sincerely want to create more accessible content, but don’t have the expert certifications to interpret the technical criteria, especially when these teams are small and under-resourced. Move To Include saw this challenge and decided to act proactively by bringing in certified subject matter experts who thoroughly understand both social media marketing and digital accessibility to create clear and helpful resources.
LaVant’s Approach
LaVant approached this project by dividing the work into two phases: discovery and resource development. LaVant used the insights gathered during phase one to create customized resources during phase two.
Phase One: Discovery
- Strategic Alignment Session: We conducted a project kick-off meeting to align on scope, goals, key milestones, success metrics, and expectations for project management and timeline.
- Social Media Discovery Session: We led a short session with the project lead to learn more about their digital accessibility goals, team dynamics and common challenges they currently encounter.
- Social Media Audit: We completed a comprehensive audit of the organization’s social media content across three platforms using a three-tiered rubric to assess adherence to digital accessibility best practices across 15+ data points.
- Stakeholder Interviews: We facilitated three interviews with key Move To Include staff to assess current accessibility practices and existing knowledge, identify gaps, and gauge team capacity to implement accessibility improvements.
- Interview and Audit Report and Recommendations: We developed a comprehensive report summarizing the findings of the social media audit and the stakeholder interviews, and providing recommendations for the work in phase two.
Phase Two: Resource Development Work
- Social Media Accessibility Playbook: We created streamlined, easy-to-use custom guide designed to help social media managers navigate the intricacies of accessibility best practices, with examples.
- Social Media Accessibility Workshop: We developed and led a recorded session with three deep dive modules that align with the areas for improvement discovered in the social media audit from phase one. The session includes breakout groups, hands-on activities, and more.
- Strategic Advising Office Hours: We provided a bundle of hours in which any member from the team could meet 1-on-1 with an expert to get support on any accessibility challenges they are working through.
The Impact
LaVant trained 30 public media professionals on three key areas of social media accessibility, empowering them to take actionable steps to advance their accessibility practices. The Move To Include team developed plans to distribute the playbook to their eight Move To Include partner stations, allowing more peers in the public media industry to also create accessible social media content. With these new resources, Move To Include created a path towards stronger accessibility principles across the public media ecosystem.
