Create an Accessible Content Engagement Strategy
Accessible, Adaptable, and Inclusive
Utilize accessible content experience design centered on accessible design systems and templates, manual testing, monitoring, training, and consultation.
Provide channels for feedback and reporting barriers to access.
Practice Cognitive Easing integrating:
- Focus
- Clarity
- Consistency
Approach communication using a variety of strategies and use multiple media for communication to make your content accessible and adaptable.
It is important for all content creators to communicate through multiple perceivable modalities, not just writing, and to learn the optimal medium for any particular content of expression and audience.
It is important to provide alternative media for expression. Such alternatives reduce media-specific and platform specific barriers to expression among users with a variety of needs, while also increasing the opportunities for engagement.
Evaluate what specific media and materials are critical to the communication goal and explore composing in multiple media such as text, speech, drawing, illustration, comics, storyboards, design, film, music, dance/movement, visual art, sculpture, or video.
Use accessibility features on any social media and interactive web tools (for example: discussion forums, chats, web design, annotation tools, storyboards, comic strips, animation presentations).
Design internal workflows and processes that are accessible (most content management systems for design and production are not accessible).
Provide Training and Resources
Provide training and resources to support accessibility throughout the planning, recording, and production of time based media, including:
- How to use professional filming equipment
- How to recording professional audio
- How to use audio and video editing platforms including how to make post-production processes accessible to creators with disabilities
- Accessible criteria for using phone footage
- How to design and create accessible titles and captions for audio and video
Incorporate Lived Experience
Incorporate lived experience in creating, curating, and community engagement. Engage with your community and lift up voices and stories that are primary source lived experiences as much as possible in their own words. Include people with disabilities at every layer of production and open channels for communication and feedback with your audience:
- How are we demonstrating/showing the accessibility of physical spaces?
- How are we addressing event accessibility?
Test Your Content
Test your content using the following tools:
- Screen Reader
- Keyboard Navigation
- Color Contrast Analyzer
- Cognition and Dyslexia simulators like Funkify
- Vision simulators
Planning and Ideation
- What is the desired outcome?
- Why are we posting?
- How will we achieve this outcome / what is our content idea and plan?
- Is this idea accessible?
- How can we make it accessible through a media alternative?
- Either by adjusting the content design or strategy to include multiple formats intended to facilitate engagement through multiple senses and focus on cognitive easing
Create a Design System
Accessible design systems are key to cognitive easing, and cognitive easing improves the content experience for all audience and community engagement.
Accessible design systems use consistent information design and correlating visual hierarchies across your communication materials. So taking time to articulate your design system and create templates that include a holistic range of content experiences will improve engagement and information retention.
How to apply an accessibility first filter to:
- Experience Design
- Information Design and Copywriting
- Visual Design
- Video recording and post-production
- Audio recording and post-production
- Motion Graphics
Experience Design
Accessibility gives everyone equal access. So planning content experiences that provide equal access means creating experiences that a wide range of people can use.
And giving people choices for how they are consuming your content is one of the most effective ways to accomplish this. But it takes intentional ideation and planning to create integrated content optimized for accessibility.
Example of an integrated approach to content creation:
If an event recording or article is going to be shared across multiple platforms, the core material should be created using accessible headers, copy, images, graphics, and video that translate to all channel formatting requirements.
Information Design and Copywriting
Use Inclusive and Person-first Language
Avoid ableist words in copy.
Be intentional and sensitive in your word choice.
For example: You may often find instructions to “See the content below”
A more inclusive wording could be: “Please refer to the content below.” This instruction is not vision dependent.
Make Text Content Readable and Understandable
Not everyone finds text easy to read and understand.
Explain the meaning of unusual words or specialized terminology unique to the subject matter.
Use consistent wording and terminology.
Avoid jargon.
If using acronyms make sure they are defined the full expression is used with the acronym in parentheses before preceding to use the acronym in the body of content. Also make sure you repeat this process for every new page or viewing portal. For example graphic slides, alt text and comment sections.
Information Should Appear in Predictable Ways
Use common schemas and organize your information so that it is intuitive.
If you create a design schema, then use it consistently.
The most important information is listed first in the largest font size.
Copy is set for reading left to right and top to bottom.
Most people find content easier to use when it looks familiar and behaves consistently. For example, putting things like the logo and navigation in the same place on every page or design product helps screen magnification users orient themselves, and using the same labels for and naming convention for instructions or objects that do the same thing helps people with cognitive disabilities correctly identify them.
Use headings for information structure
Make sure that your typographic system supports communicating a clear and intuitive information hierarchy.
Like an essay outline, headers help scanners and screen readers get a clear sense of information hierarchy and what is most important.
A WebAIM screen reader survey asked people who used screen readers how they prefer to find information on a long page. Almost 70 percent of the respondents prefer headings.
Example of information organized into a clear hierarchy:
- Fruit
- Apples
- Gala
- Honeycrisp
- Oranges
- Apples
- Vegetables
Headers on web pages and associated typographic systems work the same way, except they use h1 to h6 like this:
<h1>Fruit</h1>
<h2>Apples</h2>
<h3>Gala</h3>
<h3>Honeycrisp</h3>
<h2>Oranges</h2>
<h1>Vegetables</h1>
When you use the same Heading Schema as part of a Design System, translating images to text and text to images becomes much easier and accessible for users as well as designers.
Using Images to Convey Information
Color is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.
Use images with clear intention and attention to the specific information being conveyed.
Avoid using stock images. A person with disabilities may be looking to images to provide key information giving insight to what an article is talking about, especially if the type design and formatting are not optimized for cognitive easing. If a generic image is used that does not specifically reference the topic and message, then the overall message and meaning could be misunderstood or confused.
Apply the same concept to b-roll footage in videos and sound design and avoid using content that is decorative or filler.
At the same time be aware that repeating information can also turn into extra cognitive work.
Visual Design
Make it easier for users to see and understand visual content including separating foreground from background and following WCAG guidelines for distinguishable content for color and text in visual design.
Color is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.
Continue to Next Section: Creating an Accessible Design System