CSUN 2017: Words matter - writing for everyone

Words Matter: Writing for EveryoneAllison Ravenhall @RavenAlly

Digital Accessibility Sensei

Intopia @Intopiadigital

Hello!

I like LEGO, cats, karate, and making stuff accessible

I’m from Melbourne (“mel-bun”) Australia

Internal

messages

Email

Video

transcripts

Writing at

Blogs

Tweets

Facebook

posts

Proposals

Testing &usabilityreports

Defect lists

Presentations

Websitecontent

Braillecupcakes

Before you write anything…

… who are you writing for?

First, just write.

Proofread later.

Cut the jargon and fancy words

You’re not impressing anyone

My job description

I am a digital accessibility consultant.

I advise organisations about training, requirements, design,

testing and implementation of accessible web sites and native

mobile apps. I am particularly interested in the wording and

presentation of text, instructions and errors.

I am a digital accessibility consultant.

I advise organisations about training, requirements, design,

testing and implementation of accessible web sites and native

mobile apps. I am particularly interested in the wording and

presentation of text, instructions and errors.

The Up Goer Five version

In my job, I help computer-people build things that lots of

people can use, considering different sight, hearing, moving

and thinking. I give ideas and try things and suggest fixes to

problems. I also write and present training. I like to focus on

how we use words.

Slang and local references

…can confuse and exclude

Lies, damned lies & readability statistics

Flesch Reading Ease0 – 30 = Very hard to read

60 – 70 = Plain English

90 – 100 = Very easy to read

Flesch-Kincaid Grade LevelMore focus on sentence length

Passive Sentences“Mistakes were made by the presenter”

vs. “The presenter made mistakes”

Do the “read aloud” test

Great words suck if you can’t see them

1.4.8 Showing Words: When showing words:

1. Let people pick their own colours for words and the area behind words

2. Show up to 80 letters and things in a line (or 40 if wide picture-letters)

3. Don't put words against left and right edges of the area at the same time.

4. Make line spacing (leading) at least space-and-a-half within word blocks,

and word-block spacing at least 1.5 times larger than the line spacing.

5. Let people make words up to two times bigger and not have to move

their full-big window across to read it.

Haiku

Choose your words wisely,

Present them clearly on screen,

Know your audience.

xkcd

• Current comic: http://xkcd.com• Transcript + explanation: http://www.explainxkcd.com

• Up Goer Five: http://xkcd.com/1133/• Transcript + explanation: http://www.explainxkcd.com/1133

• Simple Writer text editor: https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/• Up Goer Five text editor (third party): http://splasho.com/upgoer5/• Scientific American blog: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-

blog/science-in-ten-hundred-words-the-up-goer-five-challenge/• http://tenhundredwordsofscience.tumblr.com/