Make information as succinct as possible

Accessibility

Content that is short, succinct, and well structured is a great way to insure users can access it easily.

Reason

• Long, dense text is off-putting and often inaccessible to many users, including people who do not consider themselves disabled.
• A user who has visited multiple sites looking for information may be tired and have better examples to compare content against.
• Someone finding pages with more streamlined information, at a different university, may leave a Carleton.ca site if it has dense, disorganized content.

Best practice

• Remember that organization is also key
• Write short, straight-forward sentences, in brief paragraphs.
• Use the pyramidal approach – Put the most important information first.
• Use unordered/ordered lists appropriately where possible
• Sometimes a page has to include much info. Employ the table of contents feature if you have a long page.

Example of less accessible practices

Obviously the inverse practices make content inaccessible. So avoid dense and verbose text, on long and unorganized pages.

Additional benefits

• Usability: This features helps users quickly scan a page for content they need.
• SEO: Google and other search engines place a huge emphasis on pages with proper headings and hierarchy.
• Marketing: If people can find content quickly and easily there is more chance they will apply to Carleton or use the university’s services.

What WCAG says

WCAG speaks about how to make text easier to read.

(Be sure to learn more about errors and alerts.)

From WCAG:

“Users with disabilities that make it difficult to decode words and sentences are likely to have trouble reading and understanding complex text.”

Learn more about WCAG says about this issue (and view their great checklist for best practice on for simpler text.)