Anyone can put information online. In fact, there is 1.2 terabytes of data online right now, and six new web pages are published every second. That’s a lot of traffic and you and your small business need to stand out.
You know you need great search engine optimisation (SEO) to get your message in front of people. You also probably know about industry terms like keywords and localised SEO. But one thing you might have forgotten about is website accessibility.
Making your content accessible to all readers, including visually impaired or neurodivergent visitors, is very important. In fact, Google marks you down if your web page copy is inaccessible.
Making your website accessible means making sure it can be used by as many people as possible.
This includes people with:
- impaired vision
- motor difficulties
- cognitive impairments or learning disabilities
- deafness or impaired hearing
- neurodiversity
At the moment the website accessibility regulations are only in force for public sector bodies. However this shouldn't stop you from following this best practice approach.
Focus on your website's level of accessibility and you’ll enhance user experience for every one of your visitors.
You’ll show your visitors, leads, and customers that you value and care about them as individuals — and in return, this type of investment will boost your brand loyalty and advocacy.
So, how do you write accessible web copy so that people find you online? Wave has a few ideas.
Make your website accessible by writing in plain English
What you say should be easily understandable and have a purpose. Online writing shouldn’t be bogged down with fancy words or elaborate descriptions. Just say what you need to say.
Clarity of writing usually follows clarity of thought, so think about what you want to say, then say it as simply as possible.
Web content from organisations such as the BBC News, NHS and GOV.UK is easy to read and understand.
Nobody wants a wordsmith. You should always try to champion the following approach:
Use short sentences and simple vocabulary
Long sentences can be difficult to read. Unnecessarily big words are off putting. Both stop people from engaging with your content, and they outcast anyone with a neurodivergent condition like dyslexia, or for whom English is a second language. Let’s take a look at two examples and decide what reads better.
Example A: Writing for the web requires you to write short sentences and uses transition words to make sure the shorter sentences flow together and don’t become fragmented.
Example B: You should write shore sentences for the web. Then, you should connect sentences with transition words. They will make your sentences flow together.
Example B is easier to read and gets the same amount of information across. And, no one is left out.
Use bulleted lists where appropriate
Bullet points make your writing easy to read and accessible. Again, look at the following examples.
Example A: When you are writing accessible content, you should make sure you use short sentences and short paragraphs, use bullet points, including subheadings and write in the active tense.
Example B: When you write accessible content, you should:
• Keep your sentences and paragraphs short
• Use bullet points
• Include subheadings
• Write in the active tense
Both examples say the same thing. But, example B is far easier to read.
Write in the active tense
Active tense gives your writing more energy and clarifies who the main actors are in your writing.
This adds clarity to your writing and makes your copy accessible. Passive tense causes confusion.
Here is what active and passive tense looks like.
Active: The dog chases the ball.
Passive: The ball is being chased by the dog.
Not only is active tense easier to read, it says the same thing in fewer words. Passive voice does play a role in some writing, but for web copy, stay active.
If you’re struggling to write accessible web copy, Grammarly grades your copy as you’re writing it. It’s also free!
Include subheading sections (Like this one!)
Similarly, you should break up your copy with subheadings. Subheadings glue your content together, and they help your web copy flow.
You can also put keywords into your subheadings. This way, you score precious SEO points and get found online.
Also, use the right H1, H2 or H3 title tags on your subheadings. This structures your content logically and enables devices like screen readers to navigate and read your content.
By using heading tags, you are giving your content a hierarchy and helping assistive technologies know what is important.
Accessible websites tell readers what they want to know
People come to your website with a specific task in mind. When developing your site’s content, keep your users’ tasks in mind and write to ensure you are helping them accomplish those tasks. If your website doesn’t help them complete that task, they’ll leave.
By knowing who you are writing for, you can write at a level that will be meaningful for them. Use the personas you created while designing the site to help you visualise who you are writing for.
Think about the following:
- Keywords: Use language that your readers would use and utilise your findings from your SEO research and strategy. This will also optimise your content for search engines.
- Structure: Break your content into chunks and start with the content that is most important to your audience, then provide additional details.
- Pronouns: The user is “you” and your business is “we.” This creates cleaner sentence structure and more approachable content.
- Visuals: Use images, diagrams, or multimedia to visually represent the content. Videos and images should reinforce the text on your page.
Use these guidelines and those listed in the introduction and you can’t go far wrong.
It’s also important to create an editorial calendar for you or your allocated team member to refer from. You can encourage visitors to return to your site by keeping your content fresh and up-to-date, especially when working with blogs, social media, or dynamic content websites.
Make sure your images have alt-text
Online images have space for alt text. You’ve probably uploaded an image, seen the alt-text input field and left in the file name.
However, not editing the file name makes your content inaccessible.
Blind and visually impaired people might use screen readers to browse the web. Screen reading software announces content using a synthesiser. This allows the computer to read text, images, icons and more.
If you don’t optimise your image or icons alt-text, you will be disadvantaging blind and visually impaired readers. Instead of hearing, “a picture of a dog and cat cuddling”, they will hear, “IMG-13462897”.
It’s not fair.
Also, optimising your alt-text will allow you to put extra keywords on your page without adding them to the copy. Search engines work similarly to screen readers and will now have context for your images. Bonus points!
What about video and audio content?
If your web content includes video and audio, write captions and make a transcript available. Also have subtitles as part of your native video.
Accessible web content has text colours that show up clearly against the background
When you design your web pages, use a contrasting colour palette. This makes text stand out against the background, and enables visually impaired people to read your content clearly.
It’s also important not to emphasise individual words with colour – stick with bold, italic or underlined.
Check if your website's colour combos are accessible and make content easy to read with this free colour contrast tool.
Stick to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 for great accessibility
We have covered how to make your web copy more accessible today, but you can do a lot more to make your website accessible to people with vision, hearing, mobility and thinking & understanding difficulties.
WCAG are internationally recognised recommendations for improving web copy. They explain how to make digital services, websites and apps accessible to everyone.
WCAG recommends four design principles.
- Perceivable
- Operable
- Understandable
- Robust
By focusing on these principles, not technology, your website copy will be accessible to everyone regardless of how they browse the web. For example, users might:
- Use keyboard shortcuts instead of a mouse
- Change browser settings to make reading content easier
- Use a screen reader
- Magnify parts of the screen with a screen magnifier
- Navigate a website with voice commands
If you stick to WCAG’s four principles, your website will have greater accessibility and get you found online. The UK Government website has more information on writing to WCAP 2.1 guidelines.
Wave is here to help if you need us
The Wave team all come from a variety of marketing backgrounds which means we approach website content and SEO in a research-driven, data-driven, results-driven way. We become experts on your business, your industry and your locality. We look beyond superficial trends and identify how real people interact with your brand.
So if you want to get in touch because you have more questions or because you need some support in taking the next step with your content writing, then just click on the button below and say hello.
