Many external services provide an Application Programing Interface (API) to allow you to grab a piece of code and put it on another website which will display content from the external service. WordPress makes some of this content exchange easy. Streaming audio and video is as easy as pasting a URL address. Flickr and Twitter require a plugin.
Due to security concerns some embed codes, such as from Ustream, are not allowed without assistance from the university Information Technology team. Send your request for these embed codes to help@sites.utexas.edu.
Before You Start
Images and media must adhere to legal requirements and policies of the university.
Streaming Audio & Video
To put streaming content on your website from an external service like YouTube, Vimeo and SoundCloud, WordPress does allow you to simply insert the video or audio link address on a line by itself. While it differs from site to site, you can usually produce a link by clicking a Share Link. Unfortunately this option does not pass current web accessibility standards.
In order for your video to be considered accessible your embed needs a title attribute. To do this, utilize the WordPress embed short code with a title attribute, as you see in the image below.
The title attribute serves a similar purpose as Alternate Text does for an image. Use all the same standards for developing a video title attribute as you would for creating image ALT text. For a refresher, visit our guidelines for developing good Alternate Text on our instructions page.
Watch our Image Optimization tutorial:
SoundCloud
Because we can’t use iFrames on UBS, the only option for WordPress is the Visual player.
Contrast: An accessible button color depends on the color of the background image. Work with this contrast checker to get as close to accessible as it allows.
Title: To add the player to WordPress use 
and add a title.
Recommended
It’s always a good idea to have an alternate way to access multimedia. We suggest adding a link to the video on YouTube or other service.
Flickr
Flickr Feed
This feature, available upon request, allows you to display images from your Flickr account within the content of your WordPress site. Unlike our other embeddable media options, Flickr Gallery requires an additional plugin and code to add a Flickr feed to a page. Because this feature requires some initial set-up, please contact your site administrator or the Web Team if you are interested in activating this feature.
Flickr Feed Accessibility
Flickr Alternative Text
As of June 2022 Flickr does not have a method for adding your own Alternative Text to images hosted on their site. It does however automatically turn “the title of your image, followed by a pipe, and your user name” into an Alt Tag (as seen below). You can add descriptions to images that are visible but will also be read by a screen reader after it readers the automated title | user alt text. While this text can be read by screen readers it does not adhere to current accessibility standards.
Flickr Keyboard Navigation
Left and right arrows are available and keyboard navigable but visitors using screen readers may have problems finding and recognizing the navigation, and auto-play is not a feature of the WordPress Flickr feed.
Because of these accessibility issues we cannot recommend embedding a Flickr feed to your site, but if you are still considering it, please contact the COFA web team to discuss adding this content to your page.
Plugin Required
Twitter Feed
This feature can display the latest Tweets from your Twitter account within the sidebar of your WordPress site. You can email us your Twitter account information if you are interested in enabling this feature. You will need to follow these instructions to make images in Twitter posts accessible.
Learn More
Find more plugins and widgets for our WordPress sites.
