27 Oct Accessible Content: What It Is, and How to Create It

Accessible content is all about giving people the ability to participate in the world around them. It builds in flexibility to accommodate everyone’s needs and preferences. The more we learn and know about accessible content creation, the better our connections will become.

Written by Rachel Clemons

5 min read

When I stop to think about it, the number of ways I consume and interact with online content is considerable. On any given day, for example, I might check my weather app as soon as I wake up, read the news headlines, scan my emails, carry out online banking, review reports, attend a webinar, watch a training module and do my grocery shopping online. And to cap it off, I might catch a show or read on my tablet before bed.

It’s easy to take for granted that all that content is readily accessible whenever I want it and however I want to consume it. But that’s not the case for everyone, all the time – but it should be.

So what is accessibility and inclusive design?

Accessibility is all about giving people the ability to engage with, use, participate in and belong to the world around them – providing flexibility to accommodate everyone’s needs and preferences.

Keeping inclusive design front and centre when creating your content will enable a wide range of diverse people – with or without impairments – to access it. And it goes without saying that inclusive design can – and should – apply to all content, whether it’s on social media, EDMs, apps, downloadable PDFs or your website.

Who is web accessibility for, and why is it important?

Accessibility is for anyone with an impairment or difference – whether that be auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech or visual. That impairment might be permanent, as is the case for someone who is blind, deaf or who has only one arm, for example. The impairment could be temporary (e.g. an ear infection) or even situational, such as not having a free hand because you’re a new parent with a baby constantly in your arms – something I’ve definitely experienced.

Put simply, accessibility is for everyone.

Anyone.

You.

And there are several good reasons why web accessibility is important:

• • It’s good for people. Information should be barrier-free, findable, perceivable and understandable. Everyone should be able to navigate interfaces, interact with them and contribute to the web.
  • It’s good for business. Having best practice and future compliant coding practice supports traffic to your website by improving SEO and search engines’ ability to crawl content for keywords.
  • It’s the law. People with disabilities are entitled to the same access to information and services as everyone else.

The impact of inaccessible content

Accessibility can affect people’s lives on a daily basis in ways that may be small or sometimes significant. Think about grocery shopping, for example. Something we all have to do one way or another. And with the frequent and ongoing COVID-19-related lockdowns, it’s something we’re increasingly doing online. It goes without saying that the supermarket platforms need to be accessible to all of us.

But they aren’t always. Back in 2014 I remember reading about a woman who sued Coles over its online shopping website (after making a complaint through the Australian Human Rights Commission) as it reportedly was taking her up to eight hours to complete an online grocery order.

That woman, Gisele Mesnage, has a vision impairment. She finds it a lot easier to shop online than struggle in a physical store, and had been successfully using the Coles website for a number of years to do her grocery orders unassisted. But in 2013 Coles launched a new upgrade of its website, which presumably looked great and no doubt boasted many fantastic features, but accessibility wasn’t one of them. A court settlement between Coles and Ms Mesnage was achieved in 2015, and ultimately Coles had to rebuild its website.

Top 10 Tips for Making Your Content More Accessible

Of course there are many more ways to make content accessible than I can list in a single blog post. But the following tips will get you off to a good start.

1. Inclusive language
   

It’s important to write for and about other people in a way that’s compassionate, inclusive, and respectful of age, gender and sexuality, heritage and nationality, medical conditions and disability. Instead of writing ‘see the attachment’ you could instead write ‘download the attachment’, for example.

2. Content structure

‘Front load’ the most important information, use informative headings and lists with quality keywords. Multiple short paragraphs (‘chunking’) broken up with subheadings is better for web readability than fewer, longer paragraphs. Ensure that heading levels follow a logical hierarchy from H1 to H4. Write descriptive link text and ensure links make sense when read out of context.

3. Text format

Avoid excessive use of italic, bold and ALL CAPS. Avoid the use of underlining to emphasise text or headings – only links should be underlined. And aim to use the default styling for text formatting, which is left-aligned.

4. Colours and contrast

Use colours with good contrast, and don’t use colour alone to convey information (use a green tick symbol and a red cross symbol rather than a green circle and red circle, for example). About 10–12% of the population have some sort of colour vision deficiency, and even people who are fully sighted benefit from the use of compliant colours and contrast (if they’re using their mobile device in poor light, for example).

5. Data tables

Only use tables if really necessary, and then keep them simple. Non-sighted people can only access tables by tabbing through them with their keyboard in a linear fashion, so make sure the table and its code are optimised for screen readers – avoid empty cells and merging cells as much as possible. Table captions provide users with helpful information on the table contents.

6. Images

Images can make your content unique and are a great way to create emotions or help people recognise your brand. But bear in mind that images made of pixels (JPG, PNG, GIF) can lose quality when magnified, so might display in low quality when someone uses a screen magnifier.

7. Alt-text and captions

Alt-text and captions should briefly describe the gist of an image, and be written in context with the surrounding content. Captions will always appear on the screen, whereas alt-text provides a clue to what an image shows in case the image doesn’t load on a web page or a screen reader is being used.

8. Video

Accessible videos include transcripts for people who are unable to watch the video (and for search engine indexing), closed captions for people who can’t hear the dialogue and other sounds, and audio descriptions for people who can’t see the video that explains any important visual-only detail.

9. Infographics

Diagrams or infographics can be easier to understand than text for some people – if English is their second language, or they have literacy problems, for example – so they can improve the accessibility of your content. But make sure the infographic is neither too big (making it unwieldy when viewed on a mobile phone, for example) nor a tiny, complex image. And be mindful that text in image files is turned into pixels so can’t be detected and read out by screen readers.

10. Forms

‘Chunk’ forms into sensible sections, place labels above form fields (not inside), make it obvious which fields are required and ensure the form can be used with a keyboard alone with a tabbing order that makes sense.

Know better, do better

There’s a lot to keep in mind when it comes to content accessibility, and I’ll be the first to admit that there are gaps in my knowledge, and I don’t always get it right. I’m still learning, after all.

But I’ve stopped taking accessibility for granted. When I check my weather app, I notice the text colours, and am mindful about how the data is being presented, for example. And when I’m creating my own content, I try to imagine how a diverse audience will receive it, and do my best to make it inclusive.

Because the more we learn and know about accessibility, the better our content will become.