Tips for a UX writer #3
In today’s edition of “tips for UX writers”, we will talk about UX writing for visually impaired users.
In the world of UX, inclusion and accessibility are one of the hottest topics. Accessibility refers to any permanent, temporary or situational impairments. In this article, we will focus on creating accessible websites for users who are visually impaired and require special assistance to navigate through any digital space. How can a UX writer make sure their carefully crafted words are fluently decoded by text-to-speech technology?
People with visual disability use text-to-speech software for reading, and speech-to-text for typing (given that there is no access to Braille display). Both iOS and Android come with built in accessibility features, ready to use from the box. While using a desktop computer, a mouse cursor is replaced with tab and arrow keys that allow movement up and down and to the sides. Enter is used for button and link clicks. There is also a system of keyboard shortcuts that helps with navigation. Personal assistants such as Siri can help with accessing apps, checking time, weather, GPS, etc…
With this in mind, a UX designer and writer need to consider that a visually impaired person is not able to see any content outside of what they are focused on at the right moment. Don’t spread the context across the whole page and also don’t rely on visuals for context when designing an accessible website. All the information user needs to proceed ought to be included in the piece of content they are hovering over, and it needs to be in a format that the text-to-speech will be able to decode. One example are hyperlinks or buttons. “Go to next page” communication is more helpful than “Click here”. Below I presented an example of a informative UX copy for car insurance website.
Talking about images, the text-to-speech technology reads “alt tags” to describe images on the website. “Alt tags” are strings of text added by web developers while coding the website. They are invisible to regular users, but crucial for visually impaired. What a UX writer can do, is to assure that every image has an “alt tag” microcopy description that accurately represents the image. For example “a pineapple wearing a straw hat and sunglasses. A cocktail next to it. A sunny day at the beach”. How detailed was the image you visualised?
For important communication that has significance to the user flow, use text and image separately. A screen reader won’t read communication written on an image and an “alt tag” can’t exceed 125 characters. Thus for longer messaging, such as 404 error page, it is best to separate live text from the image so that can be uncoded by a screen reader software.
Last but not least, and perhaps the most important thing to remember! UX writers need to make sure that Call To Action is presented before the user is to take the action either through button click or filling in the form. Also, please be mindful of sentence formatting for forms. Let’s consider this car insurance haggle website:
Here, a visually impaired user will hear half of the sentence “when did you buy or start to” and then be prompted to fill in the field. They can continue reading the sentence by returning to the CTA and clicking down arrow to hear the rest of the sentence. Once they find out what the CTA is, they can navigate back to the fill in window in the form. Sounds like a lot of hassle! And there are more questions like this to come! The page would be more user friendly and less time consuming if it had the CTA before the fill-in field.
These are our tips for screen reader friendly content, so the website is accessible to visually impaired users. Mind that all impairments may be permanent, temporary, or situational. Visual impairment considers broader group of people that just those who suffer from blindness. We hope that these tips will make it easier for you to adjust your writing to their needs. There are still plenty of websites that are not designed accessibly, and we believe that this trend has to change!
