What is accessible content?

5 tips for accessible content creation

Most frequently, it’s lack of awareness that causes content to be inaccessible. Here’s a list of five things to consider to ensure your content writers and editors are creating and maintaining accessible web content that’s suitable for all users.

1. Language

Plain language and well-organized writing benefits all users, but especially those with cognitive disabilities such as dyslexia and ADHD.

• Use clear, simple text.
• Write short, plain sentences and paragraphs in a logical structure.
• Avoid jargon.
• Explain technical terms and acronyms the first time they’re used on a page.
• Sentences should be around 20 words at most.

2. Fonts

Choose standard fonts that are likely to be available on most devices. San Serif fonts are generally the easiest to read (e.g. Arial, Tahoma, and Verdana) while Serif fonts are typically harder to read (e.g. Times New Roman, Georgia, and Book Antiqua).

• Fonts should be large enough to be easy to read by those with poor vision, failing vision, or who have reading disabilities like dyslexia.
• Body text should be at least 12pt (16 pixels) with line spacing of 1.5.
• Whenever possible, text should be real text, rather than an image of text.
• Avoid writing in all capitals — it slows down reading speed and makes it difficult for some users to read your text.

3. Colors

Some people are unable to perceive information based on color alone (e.g heading color changes) nor are they able to distinguish text from its background if there’s not enough contrast. A screen reader, for example, doesn’t give an indication of a change in color.

• Ensure there’s an adequate contrast ratio between the foreground and background elements.
• Instead of relying on color to convey meaning (e.g. red for stop and green for go) supplement your content by using text or icons to ensure everyone can understand what you’re trying to communicate.

4. Images alternatives

People using screen readers need an inclusive experience of your graphics. Brief descriptions provide meaning that would otherwise be invisible to these users.

• All images must have alternative text (alt-text) to convey information or provide context and meaning to the image.
• For purely decorative images, there is no need to write alternative text.
• Providing text alternatives for any non-text content allows it to be changed into other forms such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.
• Alt-text is announced by screen readers and is also displayed by the browser when an image can’t be loaded.

5. Media alternatives

Provide transcripts and captions for all media, so that those who can’t see or hear can still experience your content.

• For audio files — provide a transcript.
• For video files — provide a transcript of the audio or captions.
• For data visualizations — provide either a description of the conclusions that the visualization shows in the ALT text, or provide a text alternative that gives an in-depth description of the visualization.

Living in a digitally-driven world, it’s all too easy to get lost in the glory of our devices. But not all content is digitally accessible to every reader. And the excuse shouldn’t be “I’d love to make it work, but given the constraints, we simply can’t accommodate edge cases like accessibility.”

That’s simply not true. Accessibility is not an edge case.

Everyone experiences situational and temporary disabilities on a daily basis, and we’re all getting older, so it’s to everyone’s benefit to write, design and build accessible content.