Accessibility

Magnification for screen reading. Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

How timely is this! WordPress has published a post suggesting ten ways to make a website more accessible. I have much to learn!

10 Ways to Make Your Site More Accessible

Here are a few of the suggestions :

  • Use an accessible-ready theme
  • Display the site title
  • Structure pages with headings
  • Choose fonts and colours for good contrast
  • Describe links
  • Add captions to images
  • Add Alt text to images

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have compiled accessibility standards and have produced standards and a toolkit for organisations.

Writing for the web

We don’t read web pages – we scan and skim! I have been looking for guidelines to help me write better. Here’s what I found:

  • Keep it short
  • Use simple language
  • Break it up with headings
  • Use visuals

These guidelines and many others are clearly laid out in:

https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/writing-for-the-web.html
An excellent summary of points to watch when writing web copy from the US Dept of Health

https://www.monash.edu/about/editorialstyle/writing/writing-for-web
Monash University’s guide to clear and concise writing for websites.  This information also includes a guide to accessibility.

https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/Writing%20for%20the%20web_public%20version.pdf
NSW Government’s guidelines for writing for the web

https://www.enchantingmarketing.com/writing-for-the-web-vs-print/
A light-hearted blog entry with common sense tips for writing the copy in websites.

Language

This surfaced recently!   For those of us interested in the use of language, it’s an interesting look at the Shakespearean origin of some of our well-known idioms. Who would have thought!