Keys to Achieving Accessible and Inclusive Web Content

In 1997, just a few years after the internet became popular and global, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) launched the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). This initiative sought to raise awareness of the internet’s potential while also recognizing that it could be a barrier for people with disabilities. They developed the first web accessibility standards and promoted education so designers could create tools that facilitate navigation, many of which are used today (such as voice readers, alternative keyboards, voice navigation, subtitles, etc.).

In recent years, discussion has also centered on inclusion on the internet in terms of gender and sexual orientations. Accessibility and inclusion are two fundamental pillars that must be considered when writing online content, whether it’s an article, post, form, or even a simple button.

In this article, we will present advice and practices to avoid with the goal of creating an internet suitable for all people.

Putting It into Practice: How to Write Accessible Content?

There are certain methods and techniques for presenting an online text that make it more diversity-friendly. Some tips to achieve this include:

• Keep it simple: Use simple sentences and, if possible, not too long. If the information is more technical or complex, you can divide paragraphs and optimize the structure’s organization.
• Use ALT Text: Alternative and descriptive image text is fundamental so that people with low or no vision can interpret them through voice readers.
• Use the correct colors: Pay attention to the site design. It’s very important to maintain contrast between letters and background and not use too many colors, as this can be problematic for people with color blindness or reduced vision.
• Think about all the people the message is directed to and include them in the same text: It’s not inclusive to write, for example, a copy for men and another for women.
• Choose the imperative: A strategy to include the entire audience is to say, for example, “send your CV” instead of “the candidate must send their CV”.

What to Avoid When Writing Inclusive Content?

Just as there are recommendations about what we should do, there are also certain writing techniques we should definitively abandon. Some of these are:

• Generic Masculine: Language gives us infinite possibilities to avoid the generic masculine. For example, by paraphrasing (“many people attended accompanied” instead of “many attended accompanied”), changing the pronoun (“whoever attends” instead of “the one who attends”), changing the verb (“we feel pride” instead of “we are proud”), etc.
• Text not interpreted by a voice reader: Related to the previous point, many people began using X to avoid masculine or feminine pronouns. Although the intentions were good, many experts recommend avoiding this, as voice readers usually do not recognize a word that is not in the dictionary.
• Typography that is difficult to read or not recognized by a voice reader.
• Perpetuating gender stereotypes: Do not associate women only with caregiving or beauty tasks, nor men only with financial or professional activities. For example, “to change the baby, the mother must…”
• Inappropriate or controversial images.
• Offensive language: Do not refer to people with disabilities using pejorative language, nor exalt their figure. True inclusion puts all people on equal footing.

Building a Web Friendly to Diversity

After the recommendations to follow and techniques to avoid, writing inclusive content regarding disability and gender should become much easier for you. Nevertheless, there are still texts in Spanish that are more difficult to adapt to all people: in those cases, we can make exceptions and use, for example, “doctors and doctoras” or “single/a”.

At Crawla, we maintain that while each website, article, or form does what is necessary to offer the most inclusive experience possible, we will be moving towards the same common objective: making the internet a friendly place for all its users.