The most overlooked aspect of web accessibility
Clue: it’s hiding in plain sight.
Introduction
Everyone in the world of content design and user experience (UX) is very keen to talk about accessibility. From websites to mobile apps and other digital products, there’s genuine commitment to designing inclusively and universally for everyone’s needs.
Which is great. Except I’ve noticed a trend: designers tend to fixate on some aspects of accessibility, and overlook the most obvious. It’s like not being able to see the forest for the trees.
What am I talking about?
Well, first let’s just get a little perspective…
Context
About 1 in 5 people in the UK have some form of disability or impairment.
Think about that for a second. Around 20% of all people have some kind of access need. And if websites and apps aren’t designed inclusively, these people get excluded from online information and services.
Note: It’s important to remember that digital products aren’t difficult to use because someone has a disability. It’s the technology that disables people if it’s not designed for everyone’s needs.
Not only is designing inclusively the right thing to do, in the public sector it’s the law: we’re required to meet Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, to ensure content is perceivable, operable, understandable and robust (POUR).
What kinds of disabilities are relevant to web accessibility? Well, all of them. But a few examples:
- Visual — blindness, low vision and colour blindness, which can affect people’s ability to perceive information.
- Auditory — deafness and hearing loss, which can also affect people’s ability to perceive information (conveyed using audio).
- Mobility — physical disabilities and impairments that can affect people’s ability to operate digital devices and equipment like a mouse.
- Cognitive — this includes autism, dyslexia and learning disabilities that can affect people’s capacity to understand and process information.
It’s worth bearing in mind the line between ‘disabled’ and ‘non-disabled’ is blurry: not all disabled people identify as disabled, some disabilities are temporary, and there’s also situational disability, for example only being able to operate a mobile phone one-handed as the other arm is occupied holding baby or doing some other task.
Getting to the point
Okay, now we’ve got that context out the way it’s time to get to the crux of this article.
So what is the most overlooked aspect of web accessibility?
It’s readability. Plain English — or rather the lack of it.
Plain English means writing clearly and concisely in a way that everyone can understand. It avoids jargon, legalese and technical language. It uses simple, everyday words and phrases to explain things.
Most web content is text-based. Images, videos and animations can bring content to life, but words are fundamental. Take away the former and you’ve still got functional content. Take away the latter and you’ve got nothing.
Almost all the inclusive design discussion I see from digital UX people focuses on technical aspects of accessibility. Can your PDFs be read by screen readers? Does your colour palette pass WCAG contrast criteria? Does your code have the right ARIA labelling?
Don’t get me wrong, all these things are important. But I barely see any debate about how to improve readability.
Why does this matter?
First, because most services in the UK have gone digital by design.
Second, because we’ve established that the core of most digital content is text-based.
Both of these things effectively mean that everyone has to ‘read’ web content, whether it’s using their eyes or with the help of assistive technology. So the language we use literally affects everybody.
In the UK over 7 million people read at or below the level of an average 9-year old, and more than 4 in 10 adults struggle to understand health content written for the public.
Writing in plain English helps people with learning disabilities and those who don’t speak English as a first language.
But clear and concise language is also better for everyone.
I don’t identify as having a disability, and I consider myself an above-average reader. But even I struggle with some language used by government, health or education services. What could be conveyed simply becomes confusing and frustrating. Why? Because the authors write in a way that makes sense to them, using jargon and complex language.
Why is this being overlooked?
This is clearly a problem. So why aren’t content and UX designers focusing more on readability? Why do we overlook this most fundamental aspect of web accessibility?
I have a few theories:
- Firstly, it’s easy to overlook the obvious. Text-based content is everywhere — hiding in plain sight. Perhaps there’s also an unspoken assumption that everyone just knows writing needs to be accessible, so it’s not very interesting to talk about. It’s far more interesting — and makes us feel smarter — to talk about specific, technical problems like whether websites are coded accessibly or whether documents are compatible with screen readers.
- We use quality assurance (QA) tools that focus on more objective aspects of accessibility. How many pages on your website have missing alt text or poorly nested headings is comfortingly binary—there’s either a problem or there isn’t. It’s all very quantifiable, easy to explain and report to stakeholders. We also get tangibly rewarded with improved scores for fixing these things.
- WCAG itself is very technical and dense and, well, not very accessible. It feels more like a technical manual than a set of guidelines. This seems to prime us towards the objective, quantifiable mindset that our QA software helpfully measures for us. At least there’s hope that WCAG 3.0 will be more simpler, clearer and put more focus on language.
- Readability issues can be overwhelming. Even though our QA tools can include poor readability in their scans and metrics, you often end up with something like 1,000 pages that are sub-optimal. Where do you start? With the worst pages? The most used pages? Which readability test do you even settle on? It’s an existential abyss.
- Fixing poor readability is less concrete and more open-ended than other accessibility issues. We have tools like Hemingway and Grammarly that help improve writing and lower the reading age, but there’s no clear definition of done. It can also be contentious — will you be accused of oversimplifying (the dreaded ‘dumbing down’) or changing the meaning of statutory information?
- Finally, most people generally don’t realise writing and language have anything to do with accessibility. Most people’s understanding of accessibility — if they think about it at all — is about things like font size, colour contrast and screen readers (I think there’s a popular bias towards visual disabilities). That means there isn’t enough awareness about inclusive design broadly for content and UX people to work with.
What’s the solution?
Complex problems rarely have simple solutions. But here are some suggestions:
- Start recognising the problem: web content is mostly text-based, and usually not as readable (accessible) as it needs to be. This is despite many organisations publicly committing to communicating in clear and simple language!
- Raise more awareness within our organisations about the link between readability and accessibility. It’s not all alt text and screen readers — we need to write in language everyone can understand. Emphasise how plain English is a requirement to comply with web accessibility regulations. SCULPT is a simple and useful tool for sharing inclusive design principles with non-UX specialists.
- Stop fixating on objective issues when monitoring accessibility. Poor colour contrast, heading structure and link text all need fixing, but so does poor readability. Update your QA plan to include re-writing your most-used pages in plain English. (Focusing on the highest-volume content is where you’ll get most impact for your effort.)
- Push back on poor readability. If your organisation has an editorial workflow — people reviewing and approving the work of others before it’s published — clamp down on pages with a high reading age. Edit heavily, or ask the original author to rewrite it. Pick your battles, though. Don’t die on the hill of a page no one will ever read.
- Make use of new technology. AI can be a game-changer in the readability wars. Grammarly and Hemingway are incorporating AI into their service, and there are dedicated AI tools like Jasper intended to help improve writing. Most intriguingly, GPT Builder allows you to create a customised version of ChatGPT trained on your content guidelines to re-write information.
Summary
In my professional opinion, poor readability is the most overlooked aspect of web accessibility. Most people don’t even make the connection between readability and accessibility.
As content and UX designers, we often focus on issues that are easier to quantify, fix and tick off as done. This is a problem, as people need content to be clear and understandable to access online services they need.
But there’s hope: we can recognise the problem, raise awareness of it, improve our QA processes and workflows, and finally make use of cutting edge technology to make the web a simpler, clearer place.
A final note…
Shall we address the elephant in the room? How readable is this article?
According to Hemingway, it’s Grade 8. That’s good, and means it should be understandable for a reading age of 11. It could be better, but this is Medium and I’m writing for a specialist audience not a general one. So I think it’s acceptable.
About the author
Andrew Tipp is a lead content designer and digital UX professional. He works in local government for Suffolk County Council, where he manages a content design team. You can follow him on Medium and connect on LinkedIn.
