Table of Contents

Introduction

Website accessibility means making your website usable for as many people as possible. This includes people with visual, mobility, cognitive, physical, psychological and medical challenges, and can be extended to include people with limited access to technology. So when we talk about accessibility, we're taking into consideration software like screen readers, appropriate reading levels and older technologies with slower Internet speeds.

Making your site as user-friendly as possible extends to the content, which is where you come in. We've tested the design and the development of your website to meet WCAG 2.1 A standards. We've put together some guidelines to help you make the content accessible as well.

Text Content

Reading Level

Try not to exceed a seventh grade reading level. Avoid unnecessary jargon and extended metaphors. There are resources that can help you calculate how complex your writing is, including the plugin Yoast SEO, which is installed on your website.

Visually Separate Text

It’s much easier for viewers to read text that's visually separated into chunks. Create hierarchies within the content, and make subheadings for each section.

Subheadings are great for a number of reasons:

1. Allow visitors to quickly scan a page to find what they're looking for.
2. Allow assistive technologies and users who navigate websites with a keyboard to jump to the content they want easily.
3. Better for Search Engines: words within a heading are considered more important than words in paragraphs. If you consistently use headings with words that people are searching for, you’ll show up higher in search engine results.
4. They bring elements of the design onto the page, since headers are styled by the theme.

Headers

Always uses Headers in descending/nested order. H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6.

There should only ever be one H1 on a page. On the homepage, it’s the logo in the top corner. On every other page in the site, it’s the page title.

When creating content, use headers starting with H2 and moving down. This can be selected in the Visual Editor using the drop down menu on the top left (that shows “Paragraph”).