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When thinking about writing for the web, step back and remember: by writing accessible content you’re writing good content. Accessible web content is scannable, it’s SEO friendly, it’s easy to ready and it’s useful to people of all abilities on all devices.

How to write for accessibility

1. Use descriptive and relevant page and post titles.
2. Use descriptive and relevant headings within the content
3. Use proper heading formats (H1, H2, H3…)
4. Stick with the inverted paragraph – describe the purpose of the page – the biggest point – within the first paragraph
5. Break up long paragraphs – no more than 50 words per paragraph
6. Write short sentences – between 20 and 40 words (avoid filler words, keep language simple)
7. Break up the text with bullets
8. When creating hyperlinks, link off keywords
9. Do not use characters in place of letters (for example, A!!i$on for Allison)
10. Keep your text formatting simple: use all caps, italics, and underlines sparingly and only when absolutely necessary

Most important principle

The most important of these rules is #3. Make sure your page is organized under sections marked by sub-headings, and that the hierarchy is maintained. What does this mean?

Example – Can you see how this page is breaking a lot of rules around organizing and presenting text content on a page?