Make information clear, concise, and legible
Accessibility
Text information must be clear and concise. It should be broken down visually to help not overwhelm the user.
Reason
Creating clear and concise content helps different kinds of users.
- Users with a learning difficulty
- Users with a neurodevelopmental disorder
- Anyone using a screen reader who wants to work their way through the text on a page quickly
- Anyone else!
Like all initiatives in accessibility, creating clear and concise text helps everybody.
Best practice
When writing for the web try to follow a few basic principles:
- limit the number of words in your sentences
- limit the number of sentences in your paragraphs
- limit the number of paragraphs in you page
- break up content where possible with bullet points where several related items are presented
- introduce a numbered list if there are several items that are a series of steps
- use fonts which are easy to read.
Try to break up sentences where there is a conjunction. For instance, you could create two sentences from one long like the following example.
Try to break up sentences where there is a conjunction so you don’t end up with one long sentence but rather end up with two, shorter, more manageable sentences.
Take a moment to view a good example of a page with succinct, well-presented text.
Example of less accessible practices
- Please see the example page we have built to show what the same content looks like when poorly presented.
Additional benefits
- Usability: Clear and concise content is much easier for anyone to read.
- SEO: Search engines love succinct writing – it makes it much easier to discern if a page is about a specific topic.
- Marketing: When people have an easy time reading a page it leaves a great impression.
What WCAG says
WCAG has a more complete list of ways to improve text on a page:
- Write in short, clear sentences and paragraphs.
- Avoid using unnecessarily complex words and phrases.
- Expand acronyms on first use. For example, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
- Consider providing a glossary for terms readers may not know.
- Use list formatting as appropriate.
- Consider using images, illustrations, video, audio, and symbols to help clarify meaning.
(Be sure to learn more about errors and alerts.)
From WCAG:
“Copy and paste excerpt from WCAG here.”