Discover practical strategies for improving church digital accessibility in sermons, livestreams, social media, and websites on this episode of MyCom.
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In this episode
This episode walks through a practical audit of a church's digital presence—podcasts, livestreams, websites and social media—to identify accessibility barriers and easy fixes.
Learn simple, actionable steps like adding transcripts and captions, improving audio and contrast, writing clear alt text and links, and offering content across multiple formats to welcome more people into online ministry.
Episode Notes
This episode mentioned an article by Rev. Jeremy Steele: "Go the extra step to ensure your digital content is accessible to all". Explore the article and find more ways to build bridges of connection for every member of your congregation.
This episode also discusses the WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool. You can find out more about the tool and try it out on your website.
In this episode:
(00:00) Improving digital accessibility
(06:36) Importance of transcriptions and captions
(10:21) Using descriptive alt text
(11:24) Improving website accessibility
(15:52) Accessibility tips for social content
(20:22) Making content more accessible
(21:49) Podcast resources and credits
Related episodes:
- "Rewild" Church with deeper community engagement and digital tools (111)
- Ways to help your church social media thrive (107)
More Resource UMC articles on church accessibility:
- Meeting sight and hearing accessibility needs in the church
- Using AI to improve accessibility in worship and online ministry
Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:
How is your church ministry utilizing digital tools to make your good news more accessible? This is the MICOM Church Communications and Marketing podcast. We're building your digital ministry toolkit and helping to bring your congregation into the digital age. My name is Ryan Dunn. I'm a fellow traveler on the journey to to better church connections. You know, sometimes you get what should be a simple question and it turns into a whole thing. Our United Methodist communications team did a podcast training not so long ago, and one of the follow up questions asked for information about making church podcasts more accessible. Meaning how might we deliver podcasts for those who are, say, hard of hearing? How might someone who is blind or who experiences low vision find our podcasts? I started to research that out and it snowballed because I started this research by looking at my own church's sermon podcast. And then I found that a lot of the accessibility issues that it presented were related to deliverability, how we made it available.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:18]:
And that in fact, not only does our podcast present barriers to accessibility, but a number of facets of our digital presence. Do our website has issues, Our social posts have issues, Our streaming definitely has issues. There's a lot there. So in this episode of mycom, I wanted to walk through a kind of audit to take a critical look at the accessibility of my church's digital presence and in doing so, help all of us identify some ways that we can more effectively communicate with all people. In part, we can reframe this in thinking about our digital presence and asking, who is this for? And who might we be unintentionally leaving out? And the truth is, a lot of our digital content, our podcasts, our videos, our social media, might be unintentionally creating barriers for people who were actually trying to reach. So today, I want to help us think about a little bit more broadly about accessibility and give you some really practical ways to make your church's digital presence more open, more usable, and more welcoming for more people. Let's start with an idea that's central to most of us, especially communicators. We want to connect with people.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:48]:
We want to build community. We want to engage in the ministry of expanding the table. And we know that this best occurs not when we, like, reshape people so that they fit into our church or ministry, but when we, in a sense, send the church out or expand the church in a way that offers more belonging for people in a way that offers a place to belong. I think most of our listeners to this podcast would add an amen to a statement like Every person is created in the image of God. Our communication should then aspire to reflect that, right? That means providing access in all the ways that we can to life in our churches. And if I'm going to apologize here, if I sound like I'm getting a little preachy or frustrated during this episode, I want you to know that it's frustration with myself because I believe fully that previous statement, all people are created in the image of God. But in doing this audit, I've realized that I'm falling well short of living into the practical implications of that statement. And I've gotten lazy on it because no one ever complained.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:05]:
And you may be thinking about that too. Like, no one in my church ministry complains about this stuff. They don't complain that we don't make all of our sermons accessible, or that some people feel excluded from our video ministry. But the thing is, when accessibility is missing, people don't usually complain. They just leave. Or they never show up in the first place. So part of our work as communicators is to notice the barriers that others might not even have the energy to name for us. For example, transcripts.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:39]:
So many ministries, churches, faith groups, they post some kind of representation of a weekly sermon in the digital space. This might be a sermon podcast, like my church does. It might be a YouTube video or a Facebook video. It could be a piece of media that sits on the church website. Well, do we also make a transcript of that sermon available? My church has not been doing that. And we're not alone. I did a coast to coast Digital survey of 10 churches who I know post weekly sermons either in video or audio form. Well, guess how many I found who also offer transcripts or print versions of their sermons? If you guess, four.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:22]:
You guessed way too high. Just one. One out of the ten. Now, I know this isn't a huge sample size, I'll admit that, but still, it's suggestive of something pretty low. There's a lot of room for growth here. Providing a transcript of your sermon or podcast episode, or really whatever spoken or audio or video presentation that you're offering, does a number of useful things. First, it makes your content accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. But it also helps people who process information better through reading.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:00]:
And honestly, it helps just with SEO to have that information on your website. It's a discoverability tool. Now, again, I'm sounding preachy here, and it's because I feel convicted because I have also not been doing this for our church. But I can't think of a compelling reason actually not to offer a transcript. Even if it's AI generated. Even if it's somewhat flawed, it's still an avenue to increased accessibility. And AI tools can get us most of the way there. And there are plenty of free tools to get you started.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:36]:
In my case, I'm particularly culpable because I have access to a premium transcription tool and I just wasn't using it. No good reason not to be transcribing these sermons. Tagging along with transcription, though, I want to suggest taking captions on videos seriously as well. On YouTube or social media, I think that captions are essential. Again, they allow some accessibility for those with hearing loss, but they also help with engagement. A lot of people watch videos without the sound on. We can give them a way to engage if we caption videos. I generally try to burn captions into social media videos if I can, and that means the captions are part of the video, like they're not an optional feature that someone can select or deselect.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:25]:
I edit them in and I do that because it hits the crowd who is engaging with the sound off, which oftentimes, I'll admit, includes myself. Also, we want to make sure that we're presenting audio as cleanly as possible. So it needs to be clear, consistent audio that matters a lot. We want to avoid music that competes with the voices. We want to make sure that volume levels are balanced. We want to reduce background noise as much as we possibly can. For someone with hearing challenges, poor audio can make content unusable for them. Clean audio makes live captioning possible.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:07]:
So someone who can't hear what you're doing may still be able to see what you're saying if it's possible for a transcription service to decipher it. And that means that we need to have some clean audio. Also, this one is convicting for me as well. Be clear in speaking, I've got room to grow on that, especially in interview episodes on on podcasts. All right, now let's widen the lens a little bit. Accessibility isn't just about hearing. It's about how people see, experience, and process the content. My friend Reverend Jeremy Steele wrote an article about inclusive church websites, and I'll link to that in the show notes for this episode.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:54]:
In the article, Jeremy suggests the WAVE W, A V. E Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. It's a website where you can run an accessibility audit on your church's website. Or I guess, actually whatever website you want to run an accessibility audit on. My church's website came back with a score of 3 out of 10. Not super strong. Actually not even remotely strong. 5 is average.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:23]:
So, you know, we're below average in terms of meeting accessibility. Our biggest issue on the website would be low contrast images. There's simply not enough contrast between text and background or in an image itself. So it can be hard to tell what is being communicated in many cases, especially as we move from desktop to mobile device and all those images and words shrink. And in doing this audit, I saw that this is not just an issue on websites. I may have issues making sure that the text is decipherable over images on social media graphics as well, especially again as we move the image from desktop to mobile device. Now, I've already mentioned SEO search engine optimization. I tend to get a little obsessed with SEO, so I've been fairly good about including alt text on images.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:21]:
But we do want to make sure that when uploading images, we are including descriptive text in that alt text area. It's tempting to just make the alt text something catchy or just to plug in the name of the page or article that we're putting this image on. But in order to actually lend to understanding, we'll need to put descriptive text into that alt text field. The wave report can help identify places where your website might pose some navigation problems, like unclear headers and links that don't go anywhere. What it doesn't report back on is context in syntax. That's something that we'll have to address ourselves. As communicators in the church world, we might fall into the jargon of our close community, right? We want to use the Christianese words, meaning we use a lot of language that assumes that people already understand church. But for someone new or someone who is processing information differently, that can be a barrier.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:24]:
So we need to ask questions like, are we using clear, simple language? Are we explaining terms when needed? Is our content structured in a way that's easy to follow? Because clarity is accessibility, and we can carry that into things like clickable links and website buttons. So instead of saying click here on a website button or link, we might want to get detailed and say, download last week's sermon or access our worship bulletin. And overall, we want to make sure that the key information is really easily found. So people can people find service times quickly and easily? Can they understand how to contact your ministry? Do the headings of your site meet the demands of the people who might be visiting the site for the first time? One thing to keep in mind with all this website focus is that there's a hidden audience, and that is screen readers. There are apps or assistive software that convert digital text, images and interface elements into synthesized speech or a braille output. And perhaps the best way to test how ready your website is for a screen reader is to simply run it through the screen reader yourself. Google Chrome has a free extension which is okay, but I don't believe it's very robust. The best ones come as downloads.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:55]:
A few things that will help with screen reader navigatability is firstly to use semantic HTML. This involves using HTML tags appropriately so that screen readers can interpret the structure of your content correctly. So tags like header or footer or article and section provide context to the screen readers, helping to convey the layout and the significance of each part of the page. Secondly, again, I'm going to hit on this Alt text for images is important for screen readers. Third, screen readers and screen reader users typically use keyboard shortcuts. So are there ways that you can make your website more keyboard friendly? This might include making sure that the tab order is logical. So a user that tabs from one header to the next, they're not having to, I guess, deal with an interrupted flow by something unrelated interjecting in there. Something like an ad for for example.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:06]:
Fourth, we want to use descriptive titles and labels. When I was a web copy editor, I often told our writers that writing for the web means limiting your creativity. Specifically, I meant that cute headlines and puns are likely to, well, toss things out because they get tough for machines to decipher. And this is why that's important. This helps users understand where they are and how to interact with your site. 5. We want to avoid automatic media and navigation, so automatically playing media or redirecting users can be really disorienting for screen reader users allow users to control these elements themselves. Also, I think we all find those autoplay videos more than a little annoying.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:56]:
And interstitials, AKA pop ups are rough as well. I know marketers love those things, but users do not love those things. And who would you rather please? Okay, sorry, that was preachy. Again and again I'm convicting myself on this stuff and the criticisms are self criticisms. Anyways, while we're on the topic of websites, let's talk about things that we can do to make live streaming a bit more accessible. That makes sense in my head because a lot of us drive live stream users to our websites anyways. Some things are intrinsic to the live stream experience, like captions. So Facebook and YouTube both offer live captioning on your live stream without you having to do anything but offer clear audio, and I found them actually to be both pretty darn good in their transcriptions.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:52]:
Posting a worship guide or sermon outline ahead of time also helps with accessibility, however, so make sure that those are easily found and downloadable. They help to keep people engaged through the service as well. And if it's possible, having someone actively engaging in the chat offers people the chance to ask ask questions and to find assistance where they need it, and also just to feel seen and a bit connected so Moving from websites, let's hop on to social media. Here's a quick hit list of best practices for social media for accessibility Again, Alt Text for images, add detailed descriptive alternate text or alt text to all images to describe the visual content. For screen readers, I've seen many people add this as add this alt text in the post copy on social media. So for example, on Instagram they will add a description of the image. Another tip I've already mentioned this Utilize video captions and transcripts and a new discovery for me is the term camel case. This is simply capitalizing each word in the course of a hashtag.
Ryan Dunn [00:17:06]:
So loveboldly would have the L of love and the B of boldly capitalized. This just makes it a lot more readable and therefore comprehendable. And when it comes to images and text, ADA guidelines recommend a contrast ratio of at least four and a half to one. This means that the lighter color in a design is four and a half times brighter than the darker color. That means that you want at least something like a red on yellow or a blue on white background or more contrasting black and white is like a 15 to 1 ratio with your text. Avoid special decorative fonts Again, you know we're killing the creativity here, but these decorative fonts are unreadable sometimes by screen readers. And again, we want to use plain, simple language. Remember, web writing again destroys creativity.
Ryan Dunn [00:18:04]:
I like to use emojis in social media text so people feel like I have a personality. But best practices recommend using emojis really sparingly and only at the end of sentences because screen readers read out the description of each emoji. So this is if it's in the middle of a sentence, it's disrupting the content. If you're posting a link, we want to avoid using just a click here syntax around that, and we want to avoid using raw long URLs. So instead use a descriptive link text that explain where the link leads. And lastly, avoid using animated GIFs or videos with rapid flashing or strobing effects that can trigger seizures. Now you may have fallen into the mindset that I previously had that this isn't much of an issue because no one is actively complaining, right? However, digital accessibility often serves people who we might never see. It opens accessibility to people who may not feel like our traditional spaces are for them, people who experience anxiety in crowded spaces, people who live with chronic illness, people who are neurodivergent, or people who just aren't ready to walk into a church building yet.
Ryan Dunn [00:19:24]:
For these folks, digital content might be more of a necessity than a convenience. If you've run or moderated a church livestream, there's a good chance that you've had an encounter that reminds you that this is all worthwhile because there's one person, someone who can't be in your space, but who still needs this spiritual connection. And that's what we need to keep in mind with these accessibility recommendations. These are not the ingredients or a recipe for web virality. Your engagement numbers or web retention numbers are not going to boom just because you implemented these measures. But it could make a huge difference for a person or several persons who are looking for a place at the table too. And we can provide that with just a little bit more awareness. One key to accessibility is to consider offering options.
Ryan Dunn [00:20:22]:
Audio of the Sunday sermon is not for everybody, which is why a transcribed sermon text on the church website also makes sense. How can we continue to take singular pieces of content and then offer them across modalities? How can we make a video into a written web article? How are we making the important event information that is contained in, say, a PNG image available to those who can't interact with that image? Where else might we make that information available? These are the kinds of questions that might help guide towards making a connection with someone who would truly appreciate it. All right, this is a lot of info, and I'm sorry for listing it out like that, but hopefully you've heard a couple nuggets of useful information that give you some first steps. You won't be able to fix everything in the 24 hour period, but maybe just focus on the first couple things. Maybe that step is adding captions to your next video, or including a transcript for your next podcast, or updating the way that you write links on your website. These small changes matter because at the end of the day, accessibility is about making sure that people know that there is a place for you here in our community. And that's really good news. Thanks for taking this journey with us on mycom Church Communications and Marketing.
Ryan Dunn [00:21:49]:
You can learn more about the podcast you can find episode notes in the links that I mentioned and get more resources for your digital ministry [email protected] MyCompodcast MyCom is a production of United Methodist Communication. It comes out monthly. Thanks to Renee McNeil and Andrew Schleicher for production and marketing support. My name is Ryan Dutton and I'll talk to you soon. Peace.