Accessibility Toolkit for Open Educational Resources (OER): Hashtag Accessibility

Hashtags are a great way to expand the reach of your OER. By adding hashtags to social media it helps make your content be more discoverable. How you write your hashtags has an effect on their accessibility and reach. Follow these basic tips to make your hashtags accessible and increase your reach.

General Information:

• Writing hashtags using camelCase or PascalCase makes hashtags accessible.
• Screen readers cannot identify the individual words in a hashtag without camel or pascal case.
• People with cognitive disabilities or dyslexia benefit from camel or pascal case as it helps identify patterns in written words and the relationship between those words.
• camelCase or PascalCase improves readability for everyone including:
  • people with low literacy
  • people who have intellectual disabilities
  • people with low fluency in the language of the hashtag
  • people who are multi-tasking
  • people who are in a rush
• camelCase or PascalCase helps avoid misunderstanding

What is #camelCase?

• camelCase is the practice of capitalizing the first letters of words in multiple word hashtags with the exception of the first word.

What is #PascalCase?

• PascalCase is the practice of capitalizing the first letters of all words in multiple word hashtags including the first word.

Listen to a screen reader, read aloud examples of inaccessible and accessible hashtags.

• Place hashtags and mentions at the end of your post.
• Because screen readers read out punctuation marks, # and @ mid-post can be very disruptive.