Text?!

Yes, text. It’s undoubtedly the most accessible format on the Web: it can be spoken aloud, easily resized, copied and pasted, translated, spidered by Web search engines, and even converted into Braille.

However, that doesn’t give you an excuse to slack off, because the way you present your textual content can have some serious impact on the accessibility of your page. Even though text will probably make up the bulk of your site’s content, it can often be overlooked in the rush to get the graphics down pat, link your pages properly, and get the site working in a bunch of different browsers.

The good news, of course, is that text is easy to manipulate—much easier than ripping the guts out of your layout or color scheme. That means any accessibility issues with your text will be reasonably easy to fix, and it’s a good place for us to start.

Who Benefits?

When it comes to accessibility and text, everyone—and I do mean everyone—benefits from some attention to the way you present your text. A lot of these tips improve your site’s general usability. From an accessibility standpoint, however, some particular groups are worth thinking about:

• Visually impaired users will often have trouble with reading text in general, and reading it on a computer screen can make it even harder. There’s no reason to put extra barriers in their way with sloppy writing and difficult presentation.

• People with a cognitive disability have trouble with mental tasks, and often find text content to be difficult. The same is sometimes true of people with conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. These conditions can affect a reader’s comprehension of the text and their ability to concentrate. Your writing style and presentation are both important here as well.

  Note: People with cognitive disabilities can get a great deal of benefit from using graphics, multimedia, or other non-text content. However, this time we’ll be concentrating on text.

• It really is the World Wide Web. It’s likely that some of your visitors aren’t native speakers of your language, and their non-native vocabulary isn’t necessarily up to scratch. Simpler writing makes it easier for you to get your message across.

• Don’t forget about kids! While youth is not a disability, children don’t generally have adult reading skills or vocabularies, and there’s not a lot they can do about it for now. Like people who don’t speak your language, simpler writing means that they can spend more time reading, and less time checking dictionaries.

Able readers will benefit too:

• Usability expert Jakob Nielsen found that most readers will scan a page, rather than actually read it all the way through. Simpler writing and clearly presented text mean that it’s easier for people to get to the meat of your writing, without being distracted by the trimmings.
• Nobody likes waffle. Many people find technical jargon, legalese, or marketing fluff to be confusing or even intimidating. Clearer writing makes your readers feel a lot more comfortable when using your site.
• There’s usually something else competing for your readers’ attention: phones ringing, new mail icons blinking, other browser windows open, and so on. Attention spans are short. If you can get your message across quickly and clearly, it won’t be lost in the noise.

Keep It Simple

Have you ever read something like this?

We are currently in the process of consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more mainstream suppliers.

Uh…what?

This horrible mangling of the English language comes courtesy of the Plain English Campaign’s Golden Bull Awards. Somebody sent a question to online retailer jungle.com, asking whether they still sold blank CDs, and this was the response. A short, sharp “No” would have been rude, but at least it wouldn’t make your eyes cross.

When you’re writing for the Web—or anywhere else, for that matter—you should try to use the clearest and simplest language possible. It’s a good idea for a number of reasons, but from an accessibility viewpoint this will ensure that your writing doesn’t compound any other problems that your readers may have. And for those keeping score at home, using the clearest and simplest language is one of the Priority One checkpoints for the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Guidelines.

Clear and simple language doesn’t mean that you ought to “dumb it down” to first-grade level: the language you need to use also relies a lot on your audience and the text’s purpose. For example, if you’re the webmaster of a meteorology site, you can safely assume that a visitor reading an analysis of recent climate data will be someone who is already familiar with meteorology. There’s a good chance that they already know about terms like “Kelvin wave” and “positive anomaly,” so it’s fair to go right ahead and use them. However, people who just want to see their local weather forecast will be more comfortable with everyday terms like “unusually strong winds” or “scattered showers.”

Keep It Organized

The way you structure your text can have a significant impact on accessibility as well. Headings, lists, paragraph breaks, and good use of white space all contribute to an easier time on the Web. Using these techniques can help break up your text into smaller parts.

What’s more, using the correct HTML structure for your text elements can be of great benefit to both you and your readers. It’s very noticeable for people who use a screen reader such as Freedom Scientific’s JAWS, which announces the presence of a heading, tells the user when they are reading a list, and more. To do this, it relies on the structure of the page.

h2 {
font-size: large;
font-family: Helvetica, Arial, Geneva, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
background-color: #fff;
color: #900
}

<h2><img src="/images/whatsnew.gif" height="40" 
     width="120" alt="What's New" /></h2>

<p>Captain Arthur Phillip and the First
Fleet landed at Port Jackson in the new colony of New South Wales on 26
January 1788. Until the American War of Independence, Britain had sent
convicts to America. American independence ended the practice and the
British prisons and prison hulks were full to overflowing. The island
continent at the end of the world seemed a perfect place to send
them.</p>

body {line-height: 180%;}

What About Type and Color?

We’ll talk more about type and color in a later article, but the general guidelines for type are these:

• Using high-contrast text, such as a dark text color on a pale background, can make a significant difference. Higher contrast means that the words stand out more clearly, which is crucial for visually-impaired readers. It also makes things easier for some people with a cognitive disability.
• Limit your fonts to one or two choices. A page that uses seven different fonts can be extremely confusing, not to mention cheesy.

• If you’re using CSS on your page, relative font sizes like percentages or keywords are more flexible than absolute pixel- or point-based ones. (If you’re not using CSS, what’s keeping you?) Relative font sizes are calculated according to the preference set in the Web browser: if a reader has set their browser default size to “larger,” they expect larger text. Don’t stomp on their preference, because it’s probably there for a good reason.

  Broken Browser Alert: It gets worse for the 80% of users who browse with Internet Explorer for Windows. If they go to a page with tiny, absolutely-sized text and try to use the View menu to enlarge it, Internet Explorer does absolutely nothing. What a pain.

If all this relative-versus-absolute stuff is gobbledygook to you, there’s a great explanation at Max Design.

Again, we’ll be covering this in more detail later on.

Where to Start

So now you know what to do: now, where to start?

You really don’t have to rewrite every single page on your site right now, unless you’ve got nothing better to do all weekend. The easiest place to start is by looking at whatever you’re working on at the moment. If you’re adding new text content to your site some time in the near future, try to incorporate some of these techniques for making your site easier to read.

What you should think about changing soon are important and often-used parts of your site. Now is the time to look at them and see if you can’t improve their textual content. If you have any of the following, these are particularly useful:

• your “home” (index) page
• the instructions for your search engine
• Frequently Asked Questions or help pages
• product support information
• contact details for you or your company
• your privacy policy

Yeah, I even said privacy policy. Privacy policies are often filled with legalese and technical jargon, but it is important to make sure that your readers understand it—disabled or not. Even lawyers and engineers can write like humans when they try.

Further Reading

Last month’s links are still useful for finding information about the best ways to use text. However, these resources provide more specific discussions about text, language, and disabilities.

The Plain English Campaign has free guides and advice on how to use simple, plain English. (If you aren’t writing in English, don’t be put off—the principles are still sound.)

Jakob Nielsen’s collection of tips on writing for the Web is packed with goodies, including before-and-after examples of improved text.

WebAIM has a section devoted to cognitive disabilities and the difficulties that people can encounter when your content isn’t clear. For a great example of what this can be like, do the origami cup activity and see how you fare.

The International Dyslexia Association discusses the effect of dyslexia and related conditions. While they don’t seem to have a lot of discussion about dyslexia and the Web, there’s a wealth of information about what it is and how it affects people.

Aphasia is a condition that occurs after brain damage or stroke, and affects a person’s use of language—speaking, writing, or reading. The National Aphasia Association in the United States provides information about this condition and its effects.