Plain Language at Work: Creating Content That Is Accessible for Everyone (Part 5 of 5: Design)

Writing content can be challenging. Writing content that is clear to a general audience can be even more challenging. In this five-part series, learn about some guidelines for creating content that is clear and accessible to everyone.

First, see Part 1 to learn what plain language is. In Parts 2–5, learn about plain language using the following principles adapted from the U.S. federal plain language guidelines available at plainlanguage.gov.

• Part 2: Audience and Organization
• Part 3: Word Choice
• Part 4: Clarity
• Part 5: Design (this article)

Design Overview

Design often overlaps with language when we are creating content. As you are writing, you may find yourself wondering how the published piece will look. This article discusses how you can keep accessible design in mind as you write and revise.

A note on screen readers:

I've mentioned screen readers, a form of assistive technology used by people with disabilities or general support needs, in previous articles in this series, especially Part 2: Audience and Organization. I refer to it a lot in this article on design as well.

Screen readers convert text into speech or Braille. They can be very simple add-ons like the Read Aloud function in Word or Acrobat or more robust systems like JAWS or Apple Voiceover. NVDA is another screen reader that you can download for free and try out yourself if you're curious.

Use Short Chunks, Lists, and Tables

Think about how you can break up your content into chunks, especially when your content is long and dense. Your audience will be much more motivated to continue reading when you use short paragraphs and organize similar ideas into lists or tables.

A word of caution about tables:

Tables that have merged cells and multiple subheads are a challenge for accessibility. Screen readers can describe the tables for people with relevant support needs, but complicated data layouts can be harder to process mentally.

The following table has merged cells and may be too complex:

The table, 2020–2023 Red and Blue Team Wins, is made up of five columns: Team, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Beneath the top header is the merged subheader, City ABC. Two rows beneath that describe the scores for each team. Another subheader, City XYZ, is followed by the rows that describe scores for each team in that city.

For people who use screen readers, this layout may be difficult to understand because they are not able to process the data visually. I could easily break up this table into two tables, using the subheaders as the titles of each table: one for City ABC and one for City XYZ:

In these two tables, I have used the same title but added the name of the city for each title: 2020–2023 Red and Blue Team Wins in City ABC and 2020–2023 Red and Blue Team Wins in City XYZ. Now you can see the scores for each team in each city.

If you're wondering if your table is too complex, use the following guideline: If you can’t understand the table format yourself on first glance or within the first few seconds of an audio description, your audience probably won’t either. They may give up before even getting past the first column or row.

Use Bullet and Numbered Lists Purposefully

Use bullet or numbered lists when you have a long series of items in a sentence, like a list of instructions or a set of related principles. Lists break up the text and help readers relate ideas.

You will likely use bullet lists more often than numbered lists. Use numbered lists only in the following cases:

• To show sequence or order
• To show amounts
• To show level of importance

If you use numbered lists that don't meet the listed criteria, you risk confusing readers who may wonder what the numbers signal. You may have noticed that I only used numbered lists once in this entire series on plain language (it meets the second criterion, "To show amounts").

Use Simple Formatting for Emphasis

Use the following formatting guidelines when you want to show emphasis:

• Bold vs. italic. When you want to emphasize specific words, use bold or italic. Bold is easier to see, so use that in most cases. Reserve italic for book, movie, journal titles, etc. Italic text can be difficult to decipher for people with dyslexia or visual disabilities.
• All caps. Avoid all caps because screen readers may interpret them as abbreviations to spell out—PAUSE may be read out loud as “pee-ay-you-ess-ee” instead of the word “pause.” All caps text is also difficult for people to read, especially for people who have dyslexia or learning delays. The alternative would be bold text, but if you want to use extra special emphasis, consider a design treatment like a sidebar, textbox, or special subheading.
• Color on its own. Colorful text may be hard to see for people who are colorblind. Use it in combination with another formatting treatment, like bold.

Or you could just not use any kind of formatting for emphasis at all! You can use your language to make your points clear: place important phrases strategically and use transition words and relevant adjectives and adverbs. For example, “relevant” could have been bold there, but that’s not really necessary because the word “relevant” says it all. Learn about appropriate use of adjectives and adverbs in Part 3: Word Choice.

Finally, your readers may experience emphasis fatigue due to emphasis overuse. Overuse of emphasis features can make readers immune to their effects. Your audience may begin to ignore bold text because it seems like everything is bold. The result is that everything is important ... or nothing is important at all!

Reconsider emphasis and talk to designers about other ways to call out important information with minimal (or even positive) impact on readability and navigation.

Minimize Footnotes and Cross-References

In the case of footnotes, think about whether the information is important. Unfortunately, many readers (especially busy ones) consider footnotes unimportant or even disruptive. Most people don’t want to have to leave the main text, read the footnote, and then find their place in the main text again.

Footnotes as well as cross-references can be difficult to navigate for people with disabilities depending on the assistive technology they are using. If they don’t read the footnotes or cross-references, readers may be missing out on important points.

If those points are not essential, though, maybe you didn’t need the footnote or cross-reference anyway. But if they are important, consider the following solutions:

• Integrate the footnote content into the main text.
• Put the information in an appendix and direct readers to it for further reading if interested.
• Briefly summarize cross-references and then direct readers to their location for further review.

Finally, use the automated footnote feature in Word (or whatever word-processing software you are using) so that the numbering is consistent and reflows with edits.

So, how does plain language benefit all people?

When content follows the principles of plain language, everyone accesses the information equitably. Just remember the following guidelines:

• Keep your audience in mind.
• Organize your content logically.
• Choose words with intention.
• Ensure your message is clear.
• Design for readability and navigation.

Read the previous installments of the series: Part 1 (what is plain language); Part 2: Audience and Organization; Part 3: Word Choice; Part 4: Clarity.