How Fancy Spacing Hurts Accessibility
Why Tabs and Extra Spaces Hurt Accessibility
An often-overlooked aspect of accessibility in relation to social media is formatting. For social media, this means how you lay out your posts using spaces, tabs and hard returns. Because most social platforms don’t offer formatting options unless you’re writing an article on LinkedIn, some users will find ways to manipulate their content to achieve the formatted look they want.
What looks clean to sighted user can become incredibly confusing or irritating for someone using a screen reader. 😤
Formatting Matters for Accessibility
Screen readers don’t interpret content the way we visually do. They read everything including extra spaces, characters used for visual decoration and visual hacks that backfire for accessibility. Something that appears neatly aligned on your screen may be read as long pauses, repeated words or jumbled bits of text to someone relying on assistive tech.
For example:
- Multiple tabs or spaces used to “indent” text can cause unnatural pauses.
- Characters used to create custom bullet points like >>>, *** or emojis may interrupt the reading flow.
- Hard line breaks added solely for aesthetic spacing can turn your post into a bumpy ride. (And trust me, if you’re anything like me, seasickness is not the vibe.)
Simplicity Helps Everyone
The best and most accessible formatting strategy is straightforward: keep things clean, consistent and minimal.
A few key best practices to help ya out:
- Avoid using tabs or multiple spaces to visually “align” text. Platforms don’t render them consistently and screen readers treat them unpredictably.
- Use standard punctuation and built-in features like dashes, simple bullet points or clear paragraph spacing.
- Add intentional line breaks, but not for decorative spacing. Break up large chunks of text for readability. Not every sentence needs its own paragraph.
- Skip decorative ASCII art or long strings of characters meant to mimic dividers; they become audible clutter for screen reader users.
- Keep emojis to the end of sentences (and use sparingly), since each one is read aloud by name.
But What About Aesthetics? 💅
Good news, girlies! Accessible content often ends up being cleaner and more professional looking anyway. A readable post, with predictable spacing and clear hierarchy, performs waaay better across the board and especially on platforms where audiences scroll quickly.
If you absolutely need visual structure, rely on these:
- Short paragraphs
- Bold text (where available)
- Simple list formatting
- Clear headers in longer-form content
These are universally accessible and don’t depend on invisible characters or formatting tricks.
Accessible Formatting is a Brand Value
Being thoughtful about formatting is both a technical detail + reflection of your values as a company. It shows you care about whether people can engage with your content comfortably, regardless of ability or device.
Accessibility is dozens of tiny, intentional choices. Tabs and spacing may seem small to you, but they shape whether your content is truly inclusive or unintentionally exclusionary.