Plain language

Can you swiftly understand the main points of the content?

Why it’s important

Ahmad is not a native English speaker. Sometimes Ahmad finds it hard to understand legal or bureaucratic words.
Melissa has a learning disability and finds it difficult to interpret complex information.
Talia is a lawyer, she needs to quickly find and understand client information.

Plain language can engage people with words they can understand quickly. If content is easy to read it helps more people understand what to do, including people with lower reading comprehension.

Next steps

The page title is the first thing a screen reader user will hear. It’s important to write a clear title. Search results usually show the page title so it must clearly describe the page.
When writing, consider the literacy level of your target audience. Improve the reach of your online content by reading more on Easy Read.
Define technical terms that may be unfamiliar. Use a product or service's full name as opposed to its acronym or abbreviation.
Avoid using idiomatic expressions.
Include in-line definitions for scientific, legal, or technical terms that you must use.
Avoid the use of sarcasm as it can be harder to convey through text. If using sarcasm explicitly state that the statement was sarcasm.
Clearly communicate warnings, status messaging, and confirmation messages. These can assist people with cognitive and learning disability.
Test the readability of your content using LanguageTool, HemingwayApp or similar. If editing within Microsoft Word see how to check for spelling and grammar.
Download links labels should include file format and size.

References

Resources

World Content Accessibility Guidelines

Last modified: 5 November 2021