Tag Archives: accessibility

Editing text to make it more accessible

Making text accessible is about more than just using plain language; it’s also about making sure that everyone, including disabled readers, neurodivergent readers and other readers with distinct needs, can make sense of text on a website or screen. In this blog post, Andrew Macdonald Powney suggests some simple ways we can make our text more accessible, whatever its published format.

Four simple ways to make text more accessible

There are many ways that text can be made more accessible (too many for this blog post). Here are four of the easiest and most impactful ways to get started. To learn more, delve into plain language principles (for example through the CIEP’s course Plain English for Editors), or investigate web accessibility (for example by learning about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).

Styling headings

In Word, an editor can make some text look like a heading by increasing the font size and putting it in bold. But a screenreader (software that reads out text on a computer screen, often used by blind or visually impaired people) cannot interpret that. Screenreaders need an unseen ‘tag’ or phrase of code which states that the following words are going to be a heading: they need the editor to style the text as a heading.

When you apply a heading ‘style’ in Word to what already looks like a heading on your screen, Word creates the code tags for you. All future readers will be told it is a heading. Meanwhile, at the editor’s end, the visual formatting to go with that ‘style’ has to be modified just once, and the change will be made to every piece of text to which the style has been applied.

These tags of code allow the screenreader to navigate from heading to heading, and they let the screenreader explain to their human reader that a title is coming.

Shorter and simpler sentences

Short sentences, front-loaded content, active voice: all good advice for writers, and good, too, for the users of screenreaders. A person can change the speed at which the screenreader speaks, but it is still easiest to digest a sentence when the subject and key point come first. And shorter sentences are simpler to hear.

Another advantage of short, direct sentences is that they tend to fit inside a line length. This reduces the chance of a line break mid-sentence – especially if you left-align, as you should for accessibility. Therefore short sentences work across a range of screens and devices. Reading a longer sentence on a narrow screen requires dexterity, concentration, and good vision that not everyone will have. Not everyone can zoom in and out, or scroll back and forth, and still keep track.

Writers and editors may forget that reading itself cannot be taken for granted. The conditions that make it hard to remember what you read – everything from cognitive processing issues to simple tiredness – make complex sentences more of a risk. When the very act of reading takes some effort, no more obstacles need be added.

Fonts and formatting

As a general rule, the fewer serifs in a font, the better. Sans serif fonts like Calibri and Arial do a better job of keeping letters distinct. There is less danger of overlap in the ascenders and descenders of adjacent letters. People read by pattern recognition, and when the patterns are easier to spot (because the individual letters are clearer), the text is easier to read.

Regardless of which font you use, don’t create constant mental adjustments with phrases in bold, words in italics and underlines. Displayed quotations, for example, are already pulled out; putting them in italics is an extra cognitive burden.

Alt text

Alt text is text which is an alternative to the image on the page. It is commonly used to stand in for images that visually impaired people can’t see; the sighted reader sees the image, while the screenreader reads out the alt text.

Alt text image descriptions need to be short; if there is too much to say, additional text next to the image would be better. Having said that, alt text still needs to provide useful information. The editor crafting alt text needs to think: what does the author need the reader to take away from this image, which this reader cannot see? ‘Picture of a graph of temperatures’ tells that reader nothing; ‘graph showing that temperature peaked in July at 31°C’ conveys information.

Remember that text may be repurposed

If you usually work on text that is going to finish up as a printed, physical object, then it may seem like certain aspects of accessibility are irrelevant – styling headings to aid screenreaders, for example, or using short sentences to reduce line breaks on narrow screens.

But this text could be repurposed at some point in the future. What you prepare for one format now may need to be repackaged for another medium, on another day. This is something worth bearing in mind when editing any text: can it be edited to ensure accessibility across different mediums? This could help to future-proof the text against whatever else your client may decide to do with it.

About Andrew Macdonald Powney

Andrew Macdonald Powney is an Intermediate Member of the CIEP and the content and quality team leader for APS Group (Scotland).

About the CIEP

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP) is a non-profit body promoting excellence in English language editing. We set and demonstrate editorial standards, and we are a community, training hub and support network for editorial professionals – the people who work to make text accurate, clear and fit for purpose.

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Photo credits: keyboard letters by Pixabay on Pexels, blind person using a computer by Chansom Pantip on Shutterstock.

Posted by Harriet Power, CIEP information commissioning editor.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

Flying solo: Good communication is accessible

Even if you have a law degree, your client may not

Just as one of the things we can easily spot is when an author has tried to reach for the big words, words that they’re not completely in command of, so it is with writing your T&Cs and anything vaguely legal, whether that’s in emails, on your website or in your contract.

Absolutely, ensure the necessary points are covered. Writing your T&Cs in straightforward language helps you to be clear about what you offer, and what you require from a client. It then helps your client understand what it is they’re signing up to, which is one of the key ways you can prevent problems from appearing later on.

So many problems with clients stem from a lack of mutual understanding of what’s being bought and what’s being sold.

I really rate Karin Cather and Dick Margulis’s book The Paper It’s Written On: Defining Your Relationship with an Editing Client (ISBN 9781726073295), and I recommend it in the Going Solo guide.

At the time of writing, the Kindle edition is £5.98 and the paperback £9.81 through Amazon – a modest price for such an incredibly helpful guide through the complexities of contracts, and priceless if it means you sidestep problems with a client.

Although the book is written by Americans, it’s not the legal jurisdiction that’s important in this little book (70 pages) so much as the explanations of the breadth and nature of the kinds of things you want to nail down.

Contracts – honest ones – are clear and unambiguous, and they spell out the responsibilities of each party to the contract. A good contract is, in short, accessible intellectually to all involved. A good contract will also include remedies if either you or your client fails to keep up their end of the bargain, and this will be worth its weight in gold to the other.

No weasel words, no wrapping things up in cod legalese that will confuse and may well backfire.

Emails are contracts, too

You may prefer to rely on an exchange of emails rather than a formal contract. That’s fine – the emails become the contract. So it’s essential that your emails contain everything you need the client to know about your transaction, in unambiguous terms. Bear this in mind when negotiating a job.

My confirmation emails rehearse the terms of the job, the terms of payment and so on, so that what is agreed is all in one place. Complete. Accessible.

Good accessible communication is honest

Be straight with your clients, even outside of a contract. Don’t confuse your potential clients with undefined technical terms – and if you’re having to define a lot of technical terms, shouldn’t you be using clearer language in the first place?

Do NOT promise perfection. You can’t deliver it, what with so much of English being subjective. I bore people senseless on this point, I know – but it is so important. Promising editorial perfection is, frankly, mis-selling.

Any editorial discussion on social media will show you the range of possible solutions to a drafting problem. Some you’ll doubtless discount as wrong for the context, but you will also find a range of perfectly sensible solutions, not just one sensible solution.

A client told to expect perfection may have preferred one of the other solutions, and a difference of opinion on the use of the serial comma, ending a sentence with a preposition, or just how essential ‘whom’ is these days may mean your edits are found wanting, despite being just fine for many other clients.

So be honest about what you bring to the job, and be clear that you can’t promise perfection, as perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

Accessible marketing

How accessible is your website? I’m not talking just about tech things like colour contrast, and alt text and aids for assisted reading.

Do you keep your paragraph-length short for easy reading on all sorts of devices?

Are your terms and conditions for the website as crystal clear as your contract for services?

If you maintain an email list, are your subscribers offered a genuine choice as to whether to join it? Can they unsubscribe readily? Do you make it clear in every mailout how to do that?

Sweat the small stuff

I recently had an email from a fellow editor and noticed in their email signature that they were still linking to their directory entry through the old sfep.org.uk address. Their LinkedIn URL was still using http://.

Both those addresses still work just fine for now – until they don’t. Your email signature is a great opportunity to reinforce your brand and marketing: is it clear, up to date and accurate?

The ultimate small stuff is, of course, small print – content that punches above its weight. How accessible is the small print for your cookie widget on your website? Your privacy notice for GDPR compliance?

What about your profiles on places like LinkedIn or, indeed, the CIEP Directory of Services? Do you speak plainly of what you offer? Will your target client actually understand what they’ll get when they approach you?

Accessibility is good customer service

All this boils down to good customer service – as always, I’m going exhort you to put yourself in your client’s (or potential client’s) shoes and bring them along with you, cooperatively. Avoid the hard sell wrapped up in unclear, weaselly contract terms, opaque jargon (jargon editor to editor is sensible shorthand; jargon editor to novice author is not accessible) and sneaky email address capture for marketing.

A good client relationship will be built on openness, clarity and honesty – in brief, on accessibility.

Sue started writing her Flying solo column at the beginning of 2021. She’s covered checklists, customer service, using business records to make decisions, useful UK tax resources and lessening the impact of our business on the environment.

About Sue Littleford

Sue Littleford is the author of the CIEP guide Going Solo, now in its second edition. She went solo with her own freelance copyediting business, Apt Words, in March 2007 and specialises in scholarly humanities and social sciences.

About the CIEP

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Photo credits: lightbulbs by Dil; speech bubble by Volodymyr Hryshchenko, both on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

The 2021 CIEP conference: Easy English

What is Easy English?

One of the reasons I attended this interesting session is that Easy English is a new concept for me.

Cathy described Easy English as ‘writing for people who haven’t got functional literacy’. She showed us examples of Easy English documents which made it clear that this is the polar opposite of the writing styles we often work with as editorial professionals. But Cathy emphasised the myriad texts which we encounter in our daily lives and which are inaccessible to many people.

Cathy has many years’ experience in speech pathology and working with people who use non-verbal communication. Our chair, Hugh Jackson, noted that Cathy pioneered the development of Easy English, so we were in good hands. Delegates contributed some thought-provoking questions, most of which Cathy answered in the time available.

Why do people need Easy English?

Easy English caters for people with the lowest levels of literacy. This may be related to a disability or other reasons. It was sobering to consider the impact of being unable to access information that I take for granted – Cathy mentioned the significant health, social and economic consequences – and to see data showing that a surprisingly large proportion of adults do not have the literacy to manage day-to-day tasks.

Easy English is most commonly used for information that people need, such as health information or terms and agreements. (I learned that there is an accessible information standard that all NHS and adult social care providers in England are legally required to follow.) Easy English is generally not used for the cultural, leisure and news content which people with higher literacy read for pleasure and engagement reasons. Cathy said that research shows that people with low literacy do want to read these richer types of material. This demonstrates an even greater potential for applying Easy English approaches.

One very interesting point Cathy made was that Easy English can be effective for people with higher literacy levels. She gave an example of a document about court proceedings that was useful to someone at an intensely stressful and emotional time.

Some nuts and bolts

Cathy used example texts to demonstrate some Easy English techniques. We learned that we should use:

a lot of white space
directly relevant illustrations (not photographs) to help convey the meaning of the text
short words and sentences
minimal punctuation
positive phrasing
bullets to separate items in a list.

I liked the idea of ‘unpacking the language’ so that the meaning becomes accessible.

Headlines I’ll remember

It’s hard to write in Easy English!
Access to written information should not be a reading test. It should be enabling.
Access to information is a right. ‘Access’ means that a person reads, understands and knows what they can do.

I agree with conference organiser Beth Hamer that Cathy gave us ‘a different perspective’ and challenged our assumptions. I can see that Easy English is related to plain English and Easy Read, but that it goes further. I would like to explore these specialisms after I’ve completed my core training. In the meantime, it will be interesting to spot opportunities where I can use the principles in more subtle ways in my work.

Thank you to Cathy, who joined us live from Melbourne where it was late evening.

Useful resources

Cathy’s website: https://accesseasyenglish.com.au

CIEP guide: Editing into Plain English https://www.ciep.uk/resources/guides/#EPL

CIEP training course: Plain English for Editors https://www.ciep.uk/training/choose-a-course/plain-english-editors/

Anna Baildon is an Entry-Level Member and is relishing CIEP training to strengthen her expertise. She has worked in niche librarian roles in higher education and has significant experience in wrangling non-fiction copy into a publishable state. Anna has degrees in English literature and librarianship and a lifelong affinity with words. She plans to freelance, offering both copyediting and proofreading services.

About the CIEP

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Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.

The CIEP: getting together again – in person and online

Meeting up: face to face vs online

Many of our members and editorial friends have reported how much they miss physical interaction with others, and how they’re desperate to experience in-person events once more – the annual conference, local group meetings, on-site training, professional development days.

‘Zoom, Skype, Teams … it’s not the same’, we say. And it’s not. It can be exhausting editing on screen for hours, knowing that effort will be punctuated by yet more online time with family, colleagues and trainers.

And online conversations are not the same as face-to-face ones. A casual butting-in doesn’t interrupt the flow of conversation in a room quite as catastrophically as it can on Zoom.

Yet in-person business meetings have their challenges too.

Emotional: eg time away from family and friends; managing carer responsibilities
Physical: eg time spent travelling long distances; managing spaces that don’t adequately serve those with disabilities
Psychological: eg being out of one’s comfort zone; managing mental health conditions
Financial: eg the cost of travel and accommodation
Business: eg more time diverted away from client work

Shifting our former in-person events to online has shown us how we can save time and money, and reduce stress despite the fatigue that comes as part of the online package.

It’s also highlighted what many of us love most about getting together physically – talking shop, hugging, shaking hands, eating and drinking at the same table.

In other words, there’s more than one way, particularly now that we’ve got better at doing digital.

How the editing world learned to do digital better

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when online spoken communication was probably not most editors’ first choice. But many of us embraced it anyway, and the more we did it, the better we got at it.

We got used to wearing headsets, putting a hand up and waiting our turn.
We began recording some of our meetings so that people who couldn’t attend could still access the content.
We created stronger agendas and learned how to stick to them (sometimes!).
We got ourselves organised and prepared supporting materials in shared spaces ahead of time.
We experimented with subtitles so that being effective was no longer about ‘audiovisual’. It could be ‘audio or visual or both’.
We introduced breakout rooms to special events, which helped larger groups function more effectively.
And we shifted from shop talk to social talk, switched on the funny-hat filters and zany backgrounds, and raised our glasses.

And now that we’re more confident online and understand why digital networking is different but valuable, it’s time to work out how to partner it with face-to-face events rather than abandoning it in favour of a return to the way things were.

Physical and digital communication both have their pros and cons. The question now is how we in the CIEP use the advantages of one to offset the challenges of the other. That means experimenting with synergy.

What we’ve got planned: synergy rather than side-lining

Given that physical and digital meetups each have their pros and cons, and that members’ circumstances, needs and preferences vary, the CIEP is committed to a strategy that involves a synergy of digital and physical solutions rather than a side-lining of one or the other.

So what does this mean in practice? Here’s what we’re going to be testing in 2021 and 2022.

Expanding reach with the CIEP annual conference

Our first-ever online conference in 2020 was a roaring success. We’re equally excited about the 2021 meeting, which will be bigger, better and also online while restrictions continue.

Book your place at #CIEP2021 now

And while many of us are eagerly anticipating the opportunity to share the same physical space with old friends once again, CIEP2020 taught us something important: yes, online learning is different, but it can be productive, convenient and rewarding in its own way.

It is also accessible. And since accessibility is one of our core values, in 2022 we’ll be asking speakers to consider doubling their offering by both presenting on site and livestreaming! We’re looking forward to hosting an in-person event at long last, but even if you can’t make it to the venue, as long as you have access to a computer you can come to a CIEP conference.

And while it was COVID that first forced us to explore a digital conference solution, exploring ways of developing that solution is now key to our strategy, virus or no virus.

A better way of working for the CIEP Council

The CIEP Council is run by a board of directors drawn from its membership. Those who join have a range of skills and experience but one shared desire: to work as part of a team dedicated to promoting and improving editorial standards, skills and community.

In the past this meant directors travelling from various places to attend meetings in London around six times a year. With the COVID restrictions, we’ve had to rethink that. We knew we couldn’t work to our best effect by replicating the all-day meeting model online (Zoom-ing gets tiring!). Instead, we’ve had shorter but more frequent meetings via Zoom, sometimes to focus on one or two particular issues or tasks.

And it’s a keeper. We get stuff done, and quickly, because we collectively decide what most needs our talking together attention. We’re not tired from travelling, and we know each meeting is not going to go on for too long.

Plus of course we continue the day-to-day work of running the Institute via our dedicated Council forum.

But we’ve also recognised that it’s important for us to get together sometimes, especially when we need to tackle the big strategic and policy issues. So, when we’re allowed and it’s safe, we’ll be having two-day in-person strategy meetings once or twice a year to really get down to business.

By embracing a synergy of the digital and physical, we’ve found a good way for us to be more productive.

Making local groups more accessible

We want to make our local groups more accessible too. Imagine a group with 20 members.

One person’s hearing is impaired.
Three people have carer responsibilities that mean they can’t leave their homes during daytime hours.
One has a fear of open spaces that makes leaving their home during any hour, day or night, challenging.
One temporarily moves to another part of the UK to care for a friend.
One uses a wheelchair and finds the venue accessible but inconvenient.

Having a mixture of in-person get-togethers and online meetings (with captions enabled) increases the opportunity for every member of the group to participate. That makes the group a richer, more interesting, more diverse space in which to learn, develop our editorial businesses and build friendships.

The importance of testing

Are the digital/physical solutions we’re planning the right ones, the best ones? We honestly don’t know. That’s why it’s important to test them out. Those experiments, and the feedback we receive from our members, will show us the way forward.

There will be hiccups certainly, because there always are when any of us embarks on something new. But these are to be embraced because through them we learn how to do things better the next time around.

Why a holistic approach is the way forward

Approaching our meetups with a holistic mindset – one that seeks to integrate the digital into physical spaces – is nothing but an opportunity.

The easier we make it for CIEP members, staff and directors to get together in ways that respect people’s different needs and preferences, the more voices we bring to the conversation. That expands our community.

The more voices in the conversation, the more we learn. And that expands our understanding.

There’s a lot of work to do, and some of it will involve jumping through some high technical hoops, but we hope you’re as excited about it as we are!

Tell us how we can do better

Do you have ideas about how we might integrate digital tools into in-person events? What would make your life easier? How can we improve things?

Please share your thoughts with us in the comments or by email. We’re listening.

About the CIEP Council

The CIEP Council comprises up to 12 directors, who stay in post for up to two years following their election by the membership.

Meet the directors

About the CIEP

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Photo credit: hello by Drew Beamer on Unsplash.

Posted by Abi Saffrey, CIEP blog coordinator.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the CIEP.