Revealed: 73% of UK Government departments have no captioned social media policy

73% of key government departments do not follow a social media policy which includes guidance on captioned content, an extensive investigation by The Limping Chicken has revealed.

22 of the 24 main offices and departments listed on the GOV.UK website have social media accounts, and of these, only six had policies which directly referenced subtitling videos shared online.

These were the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS); the Department for Education (DfE); the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); the Treasury; UK Export Finance (UKEF) and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

Of these six, three responded to Freedom of Information requests from this website to say that they use a ‘social media playbook’ provided by the Government Digital Service for their individual channels.

It reads: “When producing audio only content, such as a podcast, a transcript (or audio description) will be provided. It should be available in HTML or as website content.

“When we produce a video with audio, we add subtitles and/or closed captions and the text transcript. Social media platforms such as YouTube allow you to add subtitles and captions easily for free.”

The guidance goes on to add: “Remember, when uploading videos to YouTube for public consumption, you need to make them accessible. To ensure that everyone can get the most from your videos, it’s important they’re either captioned or embedded with a transcript (we can’t publish them if they don’t meet these requirements).”

However, The Limping Chicken has since discovered a video from UK Export Finance – one of the three departments which follows the social media playbook – which was published to YouTube just last month without manual captions available. See below:

Elsewhere, three out of the 22 departments said they follow the Government Communications Service’s ‘Propriety in Digital and Social Media’ guidance, but this webpage does not mention captioning social media content.

As well as revealing the extent of captioning on government social media platforms, The Limping Chicken’s investigation also found that just four out of the 22 main government departments with social media accounts (18%) had guidance which explicitly mentioned alt text or image descriptions.

The two tools are often relied upon by blind and visually impaired individuals – including those who are Deafblind.

Yet, The Limping Chicken has seen several tweets from DfE and the MoJ – two of the four departments with policies on alt text – without the descriptions added. Another department, DCMS, does add the accessibility measure, but with text which doesn’t apply to the image.

In one example, an illustration of a rocket is visible underneath text which reads: “fuel a new era of startups and scaleups”, but the alt text, however, paints a different picture.

“One of the government’s tech priorities is to fuel a new era of startups and scaleups,” it reads.

The UK is leading Europe in #tech investment, which has grown from £1bn to £11bn over the last 10 years.

1 of our 10 #TechPriorities is to help startups and scaleups thrive.

Find out more: https://t.co/KOIiSCTYNm pic.twitter.com/1Ini3IpIr6

— DCMS (@DCMS) May 19, 2021

Alongside the 22 departments mentioned previously, Our investigation also included three other agencies and public bodies – these being the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the Disability Unit and the Government Equalities Office (GEO).

Both the GEO and the Disability Unit are part of the Cabinet Office, with the former having a focus on the Equality Act 2010 and the latter aiming to “break down the barriers faced by disabled people in the UK”.

In response to our Freedom of Information request, the Cabinet Office told us that the two bodies, which sit within the Equality Hub, adhere to the same guidance followed by the Prime Minister’s Office.

The guidance, available on the GOV.UK website, makes no reference to captions or alt text.

Meanwhile the EHRC, the independent equalities watchdog which investigates cases of discrimination, provided three social media documents in response to our request. They attached their social media style guide, strategy and best practice guidance.

Of these, only the social media style guide mentioned alt text. None of them mentioned captions.

The Limping Chicken’s findings, published on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, come amid ongoing scrutiny of the accessibility of the UK Government’s communications during the coronavirus crisis, with a judicial review hearing over their refusal to provide an in-person sign language interpreter for their briefings due to take place on 16 June.

Another judicial review hearing concerning the accessibility of government communications was brought by blind campaigner Sarah Leadbetter in March – over letters sent to those shielding.

Disability News Service reports that the Department for Health and Social Care ended up making concessions in the case, just hours before it was due to be heard in court.

Speaking during a Parliamentary debate last month, Justin Tomlinson MP, the minister for disabled people, said: “While there will undoubtedly be opportunities to learn from our COVID-19 response in the longer term, the overall picture is that this government moves fast and flexibly to provide support for disabled people in these unprecedented times.”

Photo: Number 10/Flickr.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.

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Update: In a statement to The Limping Chicken, an EHRC spokesperson said: “Accessibility is built into everything that we do. The need for subtitles on videos is included in every brief that we provide to agencies creating our videos, and we ensure that they are added to all videos created internally.

“We are currently in the process of updating our internal social media strategy and style guide and will ensure that this is mentioned more explicitly in the updated documents.”

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Update: A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “It’s vital our communications are accessible to as many people as possible, with staff receiving training on making their digital content and campaigns fully accessible and inclusive.

“The Government Digital Service’s social media playbook advises departments to follow accessibility standards in social media posts, including by adding captions to video content.”

The Government says individual departments manage their own social media accounts and that all staff receive training on accessibility with regards to content creation and publishing. A webpage on ‘five principles to make your campaigns more inclusive‘ was launched on the GOV.UK website recently.

The Limping Chicken understands that the Government Digital Service called on all official UK authorities to make their websites accessible to everyone last year, with the criteria including adding alt text, captions and audio descriptions, as well as minimum colour contrast ratios.