Plain Language Can Be Inclusive, Accessible, and Fun!
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A GatherContent webinar on plain language. We explore how plain language differs from other content, and how to create it. Includes tools, examples, and processes.
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Plain Language Can Be Inclusive, Accessible, and Fun!
- 1. 1 PREPARED BY PLAIN LANGUAGE CAN BE INCLUSIVE, ACCESSIBLE, AND FUN! @MARSINTHESTARS January 9, 2020 Mad*Pow Marli Mesibov, VP of Content Strategy Mad*Pow
- 2. Must Insert Background Image To do so: 1- Select “Insert” in the file menu 2- Select “Picture from File” 3- Scale your image to fill the page by dragging the corner Background Image must be “sent to back” To do so: Right click the Image, select “Send to Back” Make sure Arrow Box and Mad*Pow Are viewable. Since 2000 AmyCueva,CXO Will Powley, CCO BradHoneyman,COO Mike Hawley, CDO MAD*POW: A STRATEGIC DESIGN CONSULTANCY 70+Strong Researchers Strategists Designers BehaviorChangeExperts Technologists Locations Portsmouth,NH Boston, MA
- 3. Must Insert Background Image To do so: 1- Select “Insert” in the file menu 2- Select “Picture from File” 3- Scale your image to fill the page by dragging the corner Background Image must be “sent to back” To do so: Right click the Image, select “Send to Back” Make sure Arrow Box and Mad*Pow Are viewable. Mad*Powleverages strategicdesignandthe psychologyofmotivation tocreate innovativeexperiences andcompelling digitalsolutions that aregoodforpeople andgoodforbusiness. DESIGN FOR CHANGE
- 4. 4 Content strategy is only successful if it delivers the right message to the right audience at the right time. …and if the audience can understand it. @marsinthestars Marli Mesibov, VP Content Strategy
- 5. 5 Why are you here today? Maybe you want to… • Understand what separates plain language from other content • Gain confidence in looking for resources to reduce jargon and clarify language • Feel comfortable and confident using readability and SEO tools • Know how to measure the success of plain language across a specific population @marsinthestars Plain Language Webinar: Goals
- 6. 6 WHAT IS PLAIN LANGUAGE? Easier said than done.
- 7. 7 • Easy to read • Easy to understand • Created for this audience • Can be used to meet specific needs @marsinthestars Plain language overview
- 8. 8 We live in a complicated world, where health, wealth, and education do not come easily. We need plain language to make people healthy, wealthy, and wise. @marsinthestars Why do People Need Plain Language?
- 9. 9 @marsinthestars Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise Need to be healthy to: • Work • Make money • Process information Need money to: • Buy nutritious food • Get higher education • Decrease stress (improve health) Need knowledge to: • Know how to take care of your health • Know how to save and spend money We need good communication for all three
- 10. 10 Some of the tools and processes we’ll look at: Tools • Readable.io • Hemmingway app • SEO Moz @marsinthestars Tools and Process Processes • Health literacy planning • Population empathy/sympathy • Jargon elimination
- 11. 11 INCLUSIVITY Easier said than done.
- 12. 12 Inclusive design keeps the diversity and uniqueness of each individual in mind. Not designing for “anyone” or “everyone” but for each person. (Yes, it’s more work.) @marsinthestars Inclusivity
- 13. 13 Personas may be old hat, but MPACT behavioral personas skip demographics in favor of understanding why people act. @marsinthestars Inclusivity Requires Understanding
- 14. 14 @marsinthestars Inclusivity Requires Planning Source: Design for Real Life “Placing personas within different potential contexts – here, varying times of day – can help you identify stress cases.” - Erik A. Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher
- 15. 15 “The good physician treats the disease. The great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” - William Osler @marsinthestars Inclusivity Requires Context
- 16. 16 Consider Health Literacy Levels: The degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. @marsinthestars Context: What Information Does Your Audience Have?
- 17. 17 @marsinthestars Example: Plain Language on Cancer.net Source: Visible Thread
- 18. 18 @marsinthestars Case Study: Plain Language for Financial Savings Source: Visible Thread • What is the problem? • How does the user speak about it? • How would they describe it? • Where can we educate, and where can we learn?
- 20. 20 @marsinthestars What is Accessibility? “Remember, we’re all just temporarily abled.” - Facundo Corradini, Accessibility for Vestibular Disorders (A List Apart) Source: Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit
- 21. 21 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Managed by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Around since 1999 @marsinthestars Enter WCAG
- 22. 22 Current version: 2.1 (updated 2018) Updates WCAG with modern web considerations Mobile / adaptable sites Responsive sites Touch interfaces @marsinthestars Enter WCAG
- 23. 23 Say AAaaaaa WCAG Guidelines come with three levels of testable Success Criteria: A: Essential / “the basics” AA: The de-facto expected standard AAA: Advanced or specialised (but worth looking at) @marsinthestars Enter WCAG
- 25. 25 wuhcag.com
- 26. 26 @marsinthestars 1.1 Do you have alt-text for images?
- 27. 27
- 28. 28
- 29. 29 @marsinthestars 1.1 Do you have alt-text for charts and infographics? Worst: Bad: alt=”” Unhelpful: alt=”a bar chart” Better: “a chart showing League Points for 2019. The Jaguars scored 24, the Ocelots 36, and the Ligers 12” Best: alt + text alternative + interactivity
- 30. 30 @marsinthestars 1.4.1 Are you using more than just color to convey information? Source: https://theblog.adobe.com/4-golden-rules-ui-design/
- 31. 31 @marsinthestars 2.4.9 Do your links make sense independent of context? Click here Click here Click here Click here Click here Click here Click here Read about accessibility Fill out a contact form See more case studies Learn more about cancer Download “Accessibility” white paper Find a doctor Discover our research labs If a screen reader sees “Click Here” it makes no sense
- 32. 32 @marsinthestars 2.4.9 Do your links make sense independent of context? VERB e.g. Download VERB + NOUN e.g. Download PDF VERB + DESCRIPTIVE NOUN e.g. Download accessibility PDF The secret to good links is specificity
- 33. 33 @marsinthestars 3.1.5 Is Content Readable (Tip: use Readable.io)
- 34. 34 @marsinthestars Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and-poo-and-the-language-of-health Use the Right Vocab
- 35. 35 @marsinthestars 3.3 Are Error Messages Clear and Helpful?
- 37. 37 @marsinthestars Case Study: Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare
- 38. 38 FUN Who says we can’t have it all?
- 39. 39 @marsinthestars “Fun” Content is Content with Personality Everyone’s favorite MailChimp example
- 40. 40 @marsinthestars Creating a Voice For each adjective that defines your brand, identify: Why it matters What we know about users. How we do it Describe what this voice means/sounds like. What it sounds like Not… 1-2 sentence example 1-2 sentence example On the Website 1-2 sentence example Not… 1-2 sentence example
- 41. 41 @marsinthestars Example: RA Digital Companion Voice is crafted in theory, but must work in practice
- 42. 42 @marsinthestars Voice and SEO Go Hand in Hand
- 43. 43 @marsinthestars SEO is Your Plain Language Secret Sauce Good SEO means good content: • Choosing 1 word/phrase to be the focus of your page content • Using that term in your title, in the page text, and 1-2 headers (but not spamming with it!!) • Linking to external and internal pages related to your key phrase • Using language your audience uses (inclusivity!) • Using alt text for images, charts, etc. (accessibility!)
- 44. 44 TAKEAWAYS Let’s make the world healthy, wealthy, and wise
- 45. 45 @marsinthestars Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise We can use inclusive language to simplify and personalize healthcare We can improve financial wellness by making everything (health, finance, and other content) accessible We can make knowledge more fun and easier to find with good SEO We can create plain language for all
- 46. 46 @marsinthestars Thank you! Marli Mesibov, VP of Content Strategy Mad*Pow @marsinthestars | marli@madpow.com Marli.us | madpow.com
Editor's Notes
- Mad*Pow is a strategic design consultancy We’ve been in business for nearly 20 year now We have 70 full time employees across 2 offices
- Even though MadPow does a ton of digital work and our roots are squarely planted in UX, we don’t think of ourselves as a digital agency. We’re an experience design agency – our mission is to improve the way people interactive with organizations and technology We leverage human centered design to create better experiences for people.
- This helps avoid false empathy, e.g. “I have learned about x population, now I feel like them.”
- Worth mentioning, WCAG doesn’t update very often, but when it does it is significant. If you have some familiarity with WCAG from a few years ago its worth checking in again now. The recent 2.1 update fixed a lot of gaps and brought a ton of benefit to mobile users. These new rules don’t over-write any 2.0 rules, btw.
- J: W3C determines whether something is ESSENTIAL, whether it can be REASONABLY ACHIEVED by teams, and whether WORK AROUNDS would work if the criteria isn’t met. Legal cases generally refer to the AA standard. But, there is plenty of stuff in AAA that is worth looking at and using where you can.
- Ironically WCAG Itself is not very accessible. At least to someone like me. It looks like it is written to lawyers or developers. Actually this version is a huge improvement in clarity and usability over past.
- However other folks have felt like i do and taken it upon themselves to make more user-friendly versions of the same guidelines. I personally likeWUH-CAG.com for a clear well illustrated breakdown of the guidelines.
- J: W3C determines whether something is ESSENTIAL, whether it can be REASONABLY ACHIEVED by teams, and whether WORK AROUNDS would work if the criteria isn’t met. Legal cases generally refer to the AA standard. But, there is plenty of stuff in AAA that is worth looking at and using where you can.
- Use a plugin to show the alt tags in the browser. Here’s an example from the economist. Look carefully and you can see that many of these are not very useful and just mirror the article subtitles. They have their CMS feeding the alt tags but not in a terribly useful way.
- This example from Royal Institute for the blind. They are being intentional about which images get ALT tags and which are set to empty, meaning the screen reader won’t read them.
- M: charts and infograhics have their own challenges, and this is a big topic in its own righrt. A simple chart could be dealt with by an alt tag. But that approach wouldn’t scale well for a complicated chart with many data points. One preferred way of dealing with more complex information is to give both a simple summary - the sort of thing a sighted user might grasp at a glance, like ‘Jaguars, Ocelots, and Ligers competed for League Points” as well as a full text-only alternative that gives equivalent depth of detail.
- M: charts and infograhics have their own challenges, and this is a big topic in its own righrt. A simple chart could be dealt with by an alt tag. But that approach wouldn’t scale well for a complicated chart with many data points. One preferred way of dealing with more complex information is to give both a simple summary - the sort of thing a sighted user might grasp at a glance, like ‘Jaguars, Ocelots, and Ligers competed for League Points” as well as a full text-only alternative that gives equivalent depth of detail.
- M Screenreaders can be sent to read just links Those words “click here” mean nothing out of context Even if the text above says “We have the best breast cancer specialists in the state. Want to meet our specialists?” Click here doesn’t represent that. “Meet our specialists” would.
- M Screenreaders can be sent to read just links Those words “click here” mean nothing out of context Even if the text above says “We have the best breast cancer specialists in the state. Want to meet our specialists?” Click here doesn’t represent that. “Meet our specialists” would.
- M. HHS recommends health info be written not above 6th grade . Flesh Kincaid is the most used / recommended.
- M. HHS recommends health info be written not above 6th grade . Flesh Kincaid is the most used / recommended.
- There are a lot of reasons you may not be able to say specific password details. But you can still offer more options.
- There are a lot of reasons you may not be able to say specific password details. But you can still offer more options.
- Accessibility can also be attractive