Four Tips for More Accessible Copy
- Catherine Maughan
- Mar 26, 2021
- 9 min read
Updated: Apr 9, 2021
When we talk about accessibility in the context of your website or your service, we generally think about adding tools or functionalities that help users to navigate; whatever their vision, hearing or mobility capabilities are. When applying those concepts to copy, we think about making the font bigger, taking note of colour contrast when placing text on a background, or ensuring it can be accessed by a screen reader. What we don’t always consider are the words we use and to what extent these might prove a barrier to access for readers.
"Accesibility is a side effect of inclusive design" Cat Noone, CEO Stark
Accessibility, at its core, is about making something accessible to all. It’s about not excluding anyone who you want to be able to access your content or application based on their limitations or individual set of circumstances. We have already started to expand the way we think about accessibility by going beyond only thinking of it as a concession to those with disabilities. For example, improving contrast for those with poor sight is also useful to other users trying to view something in low light. In the same way, designing for users with mobility impairments also helps those who are fully able to perform tasks whilst holding a baby, carrying shopping, etc.
As we expand this global understanding of accessibility, we need to include copywriting itself in the conversation. Just as, when designing something to make it accessible you need to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and imagine how they would perform a task without the benefit of perfect sight, hearing or movement; when we are writing copy for our users, we need to do the same thing to make sure that it is understandable to them, whatever their language, identity or sphere of knowledge.
1. Drop the Jargon
Jargon is a sure-fire way to exclude people from your writing. One of the reasons people use jargon is that it provides short-cuts by abbreviating commonly used terms, or introducing new words into the lexicon to represent commonly understood processes, procedures, documentation, products, etc. However, those terms are only understandable to those within a certain group; be it a company, a department or an industry.
Over time, the terms become so commonly used that the internal group stop realising that they are actually using jargon. New employees come in and start mimicking the terminology without fully understanding what it means, until you end up with a full department of people speaking a language that nobody - not even they - understand.
With this in mind, there is a danger that jargon becomes, instead of a tool to aid communication, a barrier to it. A company might promote its use to instill a sense of identity. Using the company jargon says “I am a part of this organization”, and employees use it to show that they fit in. In this kind of climate, it becomes difficult for people to question terms they don’t understand and this is when communication can break down.
The dangers of an over-reliance on jargon in a company or department setting may be apparent, but when a term is used industry-wide, surely jargon serves an important purpose? Certainly, industry jargon is used less to shame non-users and more to simplify communication. However, employee mobility across industries is so commonplace nowadays that it seems unfair to expect them to learn a whole new raft of terms every time they switch jobs. On top of that, you will find the same terms used in completely different ways across industries, which can prove very confusing for insiders as well as outsiders.
So, how do you identify jargon and root it out of your copy so that you can ensure your message is clear? This can be difficult when you are on the inside, as you are already over familiar with the language. This is where hiring a consultant can really give you an advantage.
2. Localize, don't just translate
Making sure the language you are writing in can be understood by your readers is not just a case of running your copy through Google Translate. Despite the advances in translation technology thanks to Machine Learning, that doesn’t mean you can ditch the costly translation agency.
Poorly translated copy is a surefire way to alienate your reader. If you don’t care enough to communicate effectively, how can they trust you to deliver good service? Besides the language itself, there is another set of cultural norms and guidelines that you should take into account when crafting your copy. For example, you want to open your app with “Hello, FirstName”, which seems like a fairly straightforward translation. However, if you apply localization practices rather than just translating it, you might need to ask yourself the following questions as well; Is it appropriate to address a user by their first name? What is the appropriate greeting to use in this context? Is there a more formal/less formal version of ‘Hello’? Does the greeting address the gender of the person you’re speaking to? And there may be others.
Localization also takes into account things like date format, units of measurement, and currency. For example, you may not need to translate your website content from British English into American English (spelling differences aside), but if you have a calendar app, you would need to ensure that on the American version dates appear in the MM/DD format and on the British version they appear in the DD/MM format; a small but important difference.
You may also have to make some decisions based on textual considerations, such as right-to-left languages, or word length: German has a lot of long words and so you may need to either adapt the size of buttons in the UI or adapt your translations to fit.
If you have forms on your site, adapting these to your users is essential. Many of us will have experienced filling out an online contact form which only accepts a US-style ZIP code, or which doesn’t accept your phone number format, or insists you have two surnames rather than one. There is nothing more frustrating for your users than having assumptions made about them by a faceless form.
3. Use Plain English
We have already seen how localization concerns can play a role in how you approach your translations for different markets, but should you localize your English copy for different markets as well? Or is there a style you can use which can be understood by all English speakers?
For a long time American English has dominated the Internet, but slowly this is being replaced by a more generic style that is more inclusive of second-language speakers of English. And it’s not hard to understand why. Although English ranks third in terms of native language speakers (Chinese and Spanish both have more), English as a second language is spoken worldwide by an estimated 1.5 billion, surpassing even even the 1.3 billion Chinese speakers. English has some natural advantages which have boosted it’s adoption across the world. Besides the obvious advantage of it being the de facto language of the internet (both front- and back-end), it also benefits by being extremely accessible for new speakers.
However, despite its simple grammar rules, one of its drawbacks is the sheer depth and diversity of English vocabulary. The Oxford English Dictionary currently counts 171,476 words. Compare that to the 93,000 in Spanish and 85,568 in Chinese. English has absorbed terms and expressions from a diverse range of inputs so that the result is we have many ways to say the same things, creating a dizzying and growing array of variations that are often only understood by the nation, region or community group. English has so many synonyms and homonyms that a specific dictionary is needed for the task; the concept of a thesaurus doesn't even exist in most other languages.
Evidently, we cannot expect second-language speakers to be acquainted with even a fraction of these terms, so it is important when writing for a diverse audience to cut out the idioms, nuance, regional variations and cultural references and to use simple and direct terminology. Technical writing is perfectly adapted for International English as it has to be clear, direct and unambiguous: Clear communication is prioritized above captivating and emotive copy. However, applying these same technical writing principles to all your copy is a way to ensure your message is not being lost through the language you are using.
Using idiomatic expressions, metaphors or cultural references may seem like a good way to get your personality across, but it’s also a surefire way to alienate half of your potential audience. Asking your customers to “step up to the plate”, make a “Hail Mary pass”, or “get the rub of the green” are all likely to fall on deaf ears in the majority of countries who don’t know anything about baseball, American football or cricket. In the same way, referencing fashion, music or films from your favorite era might go down well with your peers, but will alienate the rest of your audience.
Even if you clear out those cultural references and turns of phrase to keep your copy clear and concise, you can still confuse your readers if you don’t pay attention to words which have double-meaning or different meanings in different territories. Phrasal verbs are a classic example of this.
Phrasal verbs comprise a verb stem and a preposition, think ‘get up’, ‘go away’, fall over’, and are used so frequently by native speakers that they form a key part of our base vocabulary. Non-native speakers can’t avoid them either, although they contain many tricks to keep them on their toes. Sometimes the meaning is logical, with the preposition adding an extra piece of information to the main verb e.g. go up or go down (the stairs). Other times, seemingly related phrasal verbs have nothing to do with one another e.g. turn up (to an event) and turn down (an invitation). These phrasal verbs sound perfectly natural to a native speaker of English, but to a non native speaker, ‘arrive’ and ‘reject’ are much more functional and less ambiguous. In other cases, different phrasal verbs may be used in different territories. For example, ‘in the US ‘give in’ is used to mean ‘concede’, whereas the Brits would use ‘give up’. And then you have other phrasal verbs that can have different meanings depending on the context e.g. you can call out to a friend, or you can call someone out on their bad behavior. You can fall out with someone or you can fall out of the window.
Having someone to review your copy for these kinds of traps can make it much more accessible to non-native readers and more inclusive of a wider audience.
4. Diversity and Inclusion
We need to make sure our writing is not exclusionary or insensitive to users depending on how they choose to identify. For some, diversity and inclusion is a separate issue to accessibility, but when you consider that accessibility is about allowing your users to interact with your product in a comfortable way, then diversity and inclusion needs to be a part of that same conversation. In fact, there is also a crossover into localization practices. For example, religious identity or affiliation will vary depending on the territory but may also be a cause for suppression in some places, so deciding whether to include it in your form will require a combination of inclusion and localization considerations.
Racial identity also varies depending on the territory and many racial categorizations are highly charged. Racial identity is increasingly fluid and even including it at all could be seen as unnecessary at best, and offensive at worst. For example, the term BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) is commonly used in the UK as a racial category in forms, etc and a convenient way to group together non-white minorities. However, the term is increasingly rejected by those falling within its confines, as it effectively wipes out individual racial identity and lumps all minorities into the same group for the purpose of convenience.
We should bear these things in mind when asking our users how they identify and, in many cases, we should ask ourselves whether we should be requesting this information at all. Rather than increasing the categories you have to accommodate all possible forms of identification, why not remove them? For example, you may feel you are being inclusive by asking a user what pronouns they prefer, but if you are only ever addressing them directly, why would you ever need to use he/she/they? Users will sniff out virtue signalling from arbitrary questions such as this.
It may be necessary to ask for gender when writing in languages that require gender for adjectival agreement e.g. to ask ‘Are you satisfied with our service?’ in Spanish, you would need to know if ‘you’ is male or female (satisfecho/satisfecha). But if you can omit the question for English speakers, all the better.
It is also important to remove gender bias from your writing. This often shows up when defaulting to ‘he/him’ when talking about a neutral third party, but can also come in the form of ‘masculine’ language such as ‘killing it’, ‘crushing it’, ‘rock stars’, etc. This language, originating from the largely male tech space, has now entered into the wider business lexicon. Bear in mind that some of your users may find this kind of language a turn off and we may see a backlash against it in the future.
There is also research showing that women and men respond differently to different business buzzwords. All the more reason to cut the jargon and speak in clear and direct language.
The world is changing and evolving rapidly and it’s important to be on top of these changes to ensure you wrting is sensitive and inclusive. Never have words had more power than now. Make sure that your written record is appropriate and representative of your brand by having a consultant review it for inclusivity.
Comments