National Disability Employment Awareness Month

Did you know that October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month? Each fall, NDEAM is a time to educate our communities about disability employment issues and celebrate the contributions of American workers with disabilities.

• This year, the NDEAM theme is Inclusion Works. That means that individuals and groups across the nation are envisaged to take their NDEAM spirit to social media by posting images that illustrate the many ways inclusion works.

• The Campaign for Disability Employment* (CDE) is running a quote-a-day series on Twitter from a variety of disability leaders. The CDE is also having a 31 Days, 31 Ways #InclusionWorks series on both Twitter and Facebook.

In the spirit of NDEAM, we’re pleased to share these social media accessibility tips to help you ensure your social media posts are accessible to all:

• Make sure your profile page includes alternative contact options, such as an accessible contact form, a toll-free phone number, or an email link to someone who can assist people with questions.
  
• Let screen reader users know what to expect by including a short prefix before posts that contain photos [PIC], videos [VIDEO] or audio [AUDIO].
  
• Whenever possible, link back to pages that contain full captions or transcripts of a photo, video or audio segment.
  
• To help increase readability, place #hashtags or @mentions at the end of your tweets and posts.
  
• Avoid abbreviations as much as possible and spell out acronyms in tweets or posts where you can.
  
• In multi-word hashtags, always capitalize the first letters of each section of a compound word (#LikeThisOne).
  
• Provide closed captioning of your YouTube videos.
  

This October, join the conversation and spread the word about the NDEAM! Head over to our Facebook page and Twitter to share your examples of when #InclusionWorks.