What is a #hashtag?
A hashtag is a way to reach more audiences on social media. People who don’t know you can quickly find and see your business using hashtags. While creating a hashtag, most people keep the initials of each word lowercase, and it looks something like #makingwebimagesaccessible. We can increase a hashtag’s readability by using CamelCase.
What is CamelCase?
CamelCase has been described as the practice of capitalizing the first letters of words in multiple word hashtags.
CamelCase is named after the way its capital letters protrude like a camel’s humps.
Why Use CamelCase?
Everything has a hashtag these days. The hashtag has become so much a part of our communication and social lives that we don’t tend to think about it technically. CamelCase is a way to improve hashtags for people with a vision impairment.
Usually, hashtags don’t have spaces, and it takes a mental struggle to decipher the phrases.
Screen readers also read hashtags as a single long word.
However, CamelCase is a great way to increase screen readability by reading hashtags as separate words instead of garble by capitalizing the first letter of each word. For instance, #MakingWebImagesAccessible is easier to read than a simple hashtag.
CamelCase improves accessibility and also shows your consideration for the following people:
- People with dyslexia, dyscalculia or other learning differences
- The Blind community
- Those who have some vision loss
- People who use screen readers
- People with a cognitive impairment
CamelCase is a lovely tool because it is easy, accessible, and makes technology more available for everybody.
Please consider the above information when posting images on social media.