Creating quality, accessible content ensures that every member of your audience has the opportunity to be engaged, take action, and provide valuable feedback to your campaigns. Create content that can be accessed by and engaged with by as many people as possible. Creating accessible content allows larger groups of people, including those with disabilities and wide ranges of neurodiversity, cultural backgrounds, and physical access points, to access and engage with your content.
Considerations for Accessibility
Accessible content is content written with all types of people and points of access in mind. When creating content for large groups of people with the goal of encouraging engagement, it’s important to remember that everyone interacts with content differently. Understanding these variations in interaction and access can help you build communication campaigns with higher chances of engagement and meaningful viewership.
When creating content, keep in mind:
Neurodiversity
Every person is completely different from the next. Individuals come with an array of ways to ingest content. Some people may be more productive and alert in the evening whereas others thrive early in the morning. Some find it easier to skim through content while others need to read content word-for-word to fully understand the message presented. There are also other mental diversities and capabilities to keep in mind when creating content that everyone can read through.
Physical ability
A person’s ability to see, hear, feel, and speak may affect how they receive and interpret messages. Several tools exist for readers to ingest content delivered through the web. There are screen readers for those who are not able to see content, speech to text for users who are not able to navigate through content physically, and more. These abilities are important to keep in mind when considering how to create content for your campaigns.
Points of access
With modern work, employees can access internal communication from a variety of devices. For example, employees in many industries are increasingly using mobile and touchscreen devices for work. Because of this, information shared should remain flexible, interactive, and easy to read and smaller devices.
Language
Global companies hold a diverse group of employees who all access and take in information differently. Creating content that is easy to translate to different languages or making sure there’s a localization infrastructure within your communications organization is extremely important when delivering messages to global audiences. In addition to language diversity, make sure the corporate communicators in your organization are continuously educating themselves on inclusive language.
Content formatting for accessibility
Ensure the content you're writing is clear and that it effectively lays out the details of what you're trying to communicate to your audience. This can be achieved through proper content formatting that allows users to skim through your content, which will allow neurodiverse audiences to be able to evenly access and apply information more easily.
Use headings, indentations, numbered and bulleted lists to help content stand out, and highlight the most important elements of your content.
Good use of formatting also allows screen readers and other accessibility tools to properly identify parts and portions of content elements and communicate them to the user. Consistent formatting can also help users of accessibility tools navigate the content more seamlessly.
Use of color
Consider your use of color in messages, buttons, text, and other elements of content. Audience members who are colorblind or have lower vision may not notice or be able to interpret text due to improper color contrasting. Always ensure that lighter text colors are placed on dark backgrounds or dark colors are placed on a lightly colored background. This helps the reader clearly identify and interpret text and other elements of the content. When highlighting important information, use a bolder font or a contrasting color for the highlighted text to make it stand out.
Use of images
If you're creating content with images, make sure to use clear, high-quality images that are sized appropriately to fit the page. Images that are too large may be hard to view on a mobile device. Images that are too small may be hard to understand. When using images, be sure to add descriptive text to the image through the Alt Text tool by right selecting the image and choosing Alt text. Using descriptive texts helps users with screen readers understand images. When adding alternate text, provide a brief description on the image in detail, including the setting, actions being taken, or any other relevant information. If Alt Text is not available, consider a caption under the image. Remember to also use descriptive text for any infographics.
Use of links
Links can be added through buttons, images or plain text to navigate the reader to an alternative resource. If adding links in your content, use descriptive hyperlink text so readers will understand where the link leads. This will also be helpful for anyone using a screen reader.
Use inclusive language
Through organizational communication, leaders have the opportunity to get people together and make a difference. To have the biggest effect, the messages within your campaign must prioritize inclusive language. Use of inclusive language within an campaign helps members of your organization feel respected, acknowledged, and appreciated.
Always make a conscious effort to avoid words or expressions that may exclude groups of people within your organization.
Avoid jargon and acronyms that may not be recognized by all members of your organization.
Avoid using terms or phrases that exclude, stigmatize, or standardize, specific groups of people of different genders, races, or physical or mental capabilities.
Continue to ask for feedback
Since everyone is different, asking for feedback is the best way to gain a comprehensive view of your organization. Maintaining active feedback channels can also help communicators get new ideas for how best to get messages out.
