If I manage to make a small difference in how organisations approach digital content in the coming years, I will consider my career a success.

Why is content accessibility important?

You can have the most accessible website, platform, app from the technical side. But if the content inside it is not, the rest does not matter. Why? Because people will still not be able to find what they’re looking for or understand the information they need.

And yet accessibility is often forgotten when it comes to content. In digital we tend to overlook the words on the page, paragraphs, headings, information architecture as things that need to be accessible.

Instead, people are either excluded or forced to find adjustments just so they can access information or services.

Disabled people are your audience

As a society, we tend to segment disabled people as ‘people out there’. A specific and separate audience that does not overlap with other audiences or people we work with.

But disabled people are account managers, designers, journalists, MPs, and importantly, your colleagues. I always encourage people to think of disabled people as everywhere and everyone. There are over 14 million disabled people in the UK, after all.

We also need to stop thinking about accessibility as changing our existing content. But instead designing content for everyone before you begin. Your way of working should aim to be inclusive without a second thought.

This way you’re always writing accessible and inclusive content regardless of who you’re writing it for and what format it’s in.

I cannot write inclusive content because….

There are so many reasons why people struggle to make their content accessible, and often resist making changes. It’s…

  • “over-simplifying”
  • “my audience needs every bit of detail”
  • “the audience wants complex language”
  • “we have a specific audience so we need to write this way”

It’s not writing for your audience versus writing accessible content. You do not have to choose one. You can still

  • explain something complex in plain English, while keeping an academic or authoritative tone
  • use jargon but explain what it means
  • cut away detail and still give people the information they need
  • sell products using language that includes people rather than excludes them

Disabled people have a collective spending power of around £274 billion a year, being accessible to disabled customers has benefits.

Getting started with accessible content

The biggest challenge most organisations have is that everyone needs to know how to write accessible content. From senior management to interns. For your customers and your colleagues. Even if you’re not a writer, everyone needs to be confident with writing accessible content.

This includes your emails. You might ‘know’ the person you’re writing to is not disabled. But you cannot guarantee your email will not be sent on to someone who is.

So how do you make content more inclusive? There are some easy basics to help you improve accessibility and readability.

To get started, take a look at:

Related services

Content accessibility training

1 day of accessibility basics, supported by our expert. Train up to 16 people and get a comprehensive understanding of accessibility. Become more confident with using best practices.

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