Five benefits to writing accessible content
Do you have a favourite word? Or a word that you really, really hate?
As a professional content writer and a polyglot, it won’t come as a surprise that I do love words. Well, not all words, to be fair. I have a few favourite words (petrichor), words I try to avoid (best-in-class), and words that I simply can’t stand (utilise). In fact, between you and me, when I edit a text I sometimes delete or replace some words just because I don’t like them.
But as someone who, generally speaking, really does love words, it took me a while to appreciate the beauty of accessible content. Let me tell you what changed my mind.
What is accessible content?
Accessible content is content that can be easily read and understood by all people – including those with a disability or those who identify as neurodivergent.
The goal of accessible content is to ensure that everyone can perceive and understand the content we’re creating, reducing the effort required by the reader as much as we possibly can.
To achieve this goal, there are a series of best practices we can adopt, such as keeping sentences short and concise, limiting the use of figurative language, reducing jargon to a minimum and more.
Is accessible content dull?
Remove long sentences, ban unusual or unnecessary words, and minimise figurative language: what you’re left with is dull text, right? Wrong. Accessible content can be incredibly powerful. In fact, it can be just what brands need to expand their audience and convey their message in a clear and effective way.
It is true that some of the most accomplished writers in history have broken all the rules of accessible content – and created masterpieces. French author Marcel Proust is known for writing intricate sentences that span several pages. And yet, his In Search of Lost Time is a classic. But his primary goal was not information retention, nor persuasion.
In content marketing, we want our audience to stay with us. We want to take them on a journey, get them interested in what we have to say, persuade them they can trust our brand, and keep them coming back for more. And to do that, they must understand us.
Plus, Proust didn’t have to worry about Google.
Why is accessible content good for your brand?
Accessibility offers a host of benefits to brands that are willing to go the extra mile to make things easier for their readers.
1. Accessible content is… well, accessible
The original goal of accessible content is to make reading and understanding easier for people who have a disability or identify as neurodivergent.
For example, a person who is blind might rely on a screen reader to access information, but listening to a text is a very different experience to reading it on screen. Information overload can happen if sentences are too long or complex, because the person will have to retain a lot of information in their brain, rather than seeing it on screen.
On the other hand, a person on the autistic spectrum might struggle to understand a text full of metaphors or hyperboles. In this case, a good solution is to minimise the use of figurative language, or to provide context to explain expressions that might be unclear.
2. Your audience will thank you
Impairments or situations that undermine our ability to read and process text can have many causes. Disability or neurodivergence are just the most obvious examples. But what about someone who speaks English as a second language? Or someone who is tired, sleep-deprived or is reading in a noisy environment, such as a factory floor? These readers will also enjoy accessible content.
3. Accessible content promotes information retention
According to cognitive load theory, our working memory has limited capacity and long or complex sentences can overload this capacity, making it difficult for us to retain information. Accessible content best practices aim at reducing cognitive load, promoting effective communication and information retention.
Whether it’s for a brand awareness campaign or to explain a technical concept, you want your audience to understand and remember what they read.
4. Search engines love accessible content
Readability is an important factor for search engine optimisation (SEO). Clear and concise writing improves the user experience, so search engines tend to prioritise content that is easy for users to understand and interact with.
Moreover, microcopy – like ALT tags or button text – give search engines valuable information about the content of your page, helping them understand whether it might be relevant to users’ queries.
5. Technical concepts are easier to convey
I see you, B2B brands. You have awesome products and ideas that could revolutionise your industry, but they can be so hard to explain to a non-technical audience.
Luckily, accessible content best practices can help you explain complex technical concepts in a way that makes sense to most audiences, regardless of their background. At Pod, we know this first-hand, as we help many B2B brands bring their innovative ideas, services and products to audiences that would struggle to understand jargon-rich texts.
Accessible content offers a host of benefits that make it a no-brainer for B2B brands. We will see in Part 2 and Part 3 of our Accessibility Series how to write accessible content, and why it is important to follow best practices for readability and SEO.
For now, if you have any questions on how to improve your content’s accessibility, why not get in touch with our team?