Hello everyone welcome to accessibility talks. Accessibility talks is a monthly virtual meet-up where we come together to discuss topics around all things website accessibility. I am your host Carie Fisher and each month we will feature a guest speaker who will present an in-depth accessibility topic to the group. After which there will be some time to ask questions and discuss. So again if you have any questions today for our speaker please post them in the chat window or tag them on Twitter with the hashtag a11y talks spelled A-1-1-Y-T-A-L-K-S. This month we're happy to have it Ashley Bischoff as our guest speaker. Ashley will be talking today about embracing plain language for better accessibility. Ashley is an accessibility expert and copy editor for The Paciello Group. She has a knack for taming technical and business writing and she has is a heartfelt advocate for plain language. She really relishes any chance to comb corporate speak into everyday language. Ashley lives in Dallas and she likes listening to metal and drinking tea. Welcome Ashley! Thank you so much Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Well let's get started shall we? I'm just going to share my screen and we'll be able to kick this off. All right fantastic. So can everyone see my screen? Great so as Carie mentioned I'm Ashley Bischoff and I'm a copy editor and accessibility analyst with The Paciello Group and I'd like to talk to you today about how plain language can improve accessibility. Now for many of us within the field of accessibility it's not uncommon for us to write things like reports and analysis and documentation specifications. And those are all good things but you know what our documentation and reports and analysis are only as good as what people can get out of them. And if people find already to be too complicated or hard to understand, then they won't be able to make use of our advice no matter how good it is. Now at this point you might be wondering well what makes some writing more complicated than others? You might even be asking yourself: well how do I know if my writing is complicated? Well it turns out that people who study language complexity have narrowed it down to two factors in particular. And it primarily comes down to sentence length and syllables. Now to give you a better idea of that sort of thing I thought you know let's go through an example of a really bad sentence. So for example here's a terrible sentence from WCAG 3.1.5 which says that readability formulas are available for at least some languages when running the spell checkers in popular software if you specify and the options of this engine that you want to have the statistics when it has finished checking your documents. Now what the fuck does that even mean? And you know as we take look at the sentence we can start to see part of what makes it so hard to get our heads around. Namely, the sheer enormity of it because this sentence is 40 words. Which brings me it's my first piece of advice which is that the more complex the material, the shorter the sentences should be. And in fact experts recommend keeping sentences to between 20 and 25 words. Some recommend closer to 20, some recommend closer to 25, but that's sort of the general ballpark. And the reason that experts recommend this is because when we're presented with a sentence that we're reading, our brain has to ingest that sentence our brain has to sort through the words piece them together and basically put that puzzle back together to figure out what that sentence means. So we're going to face instead as 40 some words we potentially have to ingest all of those 40 words piece them through and then try to figure out what that sentence means. And handing off 40 words to someone is a lot to ask of anyone. So that's why experts recommend for sentences of around this length between 20 and 25 words. But with that said you also want some variety to it. I mean you should probably have a few 35 word sentences and some three word sentences but the main thing is to paying for an average around 20 some words. You know let's take a look again at that WCAG sentence and let's see if we can just make it easier to read by breaking it into smaller sentences. So that's what I did. I broke it into a few smaller sentences made a couple of other small changes and what that gives us is: Readability formulas are often available when running the spellchecker in your word processor. You can specify options to show those statistics when it's finished checking your document. So we can start to see that sometimes just these smaller changes like breaking larger sentences into smaller ones can really make a difference. But you know what? Sentence length is half the battle. Cutting syllables is the other half. Now you can think of words as being a bit like Tetris pieces. They come in different shapes and sizes. Some are bigger some are smaller. Some are easier to work with than others. And you can think of it in a way that syllables are the building blocks of words. So for instance you can think of one syllable words like being a bit like two block Tetris pieces. You can think of two syllable words like perhaps "update" like being a bit like a three-block Tetris piece. Or you can think of three syllable words as they kind of amount to about a five block Tetris piece and this is where things start to get a bit tricky. Now for those of you who might be avid Tetris fans these pieces might look a little bit off to you. And that's because in a standard Tetris game the pieces max out at four blocks. So when we're talking about these three syllable words we're already talking about complexity it's greater than an average Tetris game. But you know three syllables is not at the end of the road. I mean it also comes down to sometimes you've got four solo words which you're a bit like seven block Tetris pieces and that doesn't make things any easier. Now for those who might not be able to see the slides, I thought I might describe a couple of these seven block pieces. We've got one of them that looks sort of like an elongated plus sign. You got one that looks a bit like a donut with a bite taken out of it. And with that said okay four syllable words but there are some words that are longer than that. And when it comes to five syllable words well they're about as much fun as toothpaste with orange juice. And for those who may not be oh to see the screen we have a couple of pieces that look a bit like so when giving of it giving a number one sign at a sports event. Yeah one that looks sort of like a circle with the hole in the middle. These are not the greatest Tetris pieces to have to be working with. At this point you might be thinking well what if I have to use a long word? What if there's no way to avoid it? And you know what I agree there are some times where long words might be unavoidable. To give one example the word accessibility has six syllables and it's conceivable that if you were to be writing a report about accessibility that you may well have to use the word accessibility. And that's okay because you know if you order to be saddled with one or two of these weird shape Tetris pieces and it came, you might be able to get by. So using long words occasional all right. But with that being said the game just wouldn't be fun anymore if you already handed huge pieces like these over and over and over. So from here you might be thinking okay this starts to make some sense I guess but where am I supposed to cut these syllables? How does this work? So I thought I would go through a couple of examples of some corporate speak words and some plain substitutions. Just to kind of get the wheels turning for this sort of thing. And while I'm here I might also mention that plainlanguage.gov has a super handy list of simpler words. Where it's a page with complex words in one column and then in the next column are simpler alternatives. And if you'd want to look at that sometime you can get to that bit.ly/plainwords. But don't worry too much about writing down your URLs and things because all of my slides are online and I'll give you the link for that at the end so even if you miss one of these URLs we can circle back to that and you'll have a chance to check that out. So hey let's go through some of these examples. So for instance one word that you sometimes come across is "prior to". This one is it's kind of one those phrases that if you were to see this in a report you probably wouldn't be surprised. But it turns out that rather than saying prior to you can just say "before" and in doing so that takes you from 3 syllables down to 2. So as an example of that, someone might be accustomed to saying something like I proof read the report prior to the meeting. But instead they might be able to say something like I proof read the report before the meeting. And you can start seeing it even just with these smaller changes that these sentences become easier to understand easier to get your head around. All the while these sentences carrying the exact same meaning. Another one you might come across within reports or documentation is "commence". Now commence is really just kind of a fancy way of saying "start" but when you make that change it takes you from two syllables to one. So for instance you might be used to project managers hearing something like we will commence user interviews on Tuesday. But you know you might try something like we will start user interviews on Tuesday. Another one you come across sometimes is "sufficient". In fact sufficient is one of those words that consultants love talking about things as sufficient. They'll say oh this is sufficient that isn't sufficient. You know what rather than saying that something is sufficient or not sufficient, you can also just say "enough". And when you make that change that'll take you from 3 syllables down to 2. So for instance if you come across a navigation bar that's looking not quite right rather than saying something like the nav bar doesn't have sufficient contrast, you might try saying the nav bar doesn't have enough contrast. This next one is one of my favorites and it's "in order to". Now believe it or not almost every time you come across in order to you can swap that for "to" and that takes you from four syllables and these weird anaesthetise pieces with the donut with a bite taken out of it and it's stretched out plus sign it takes you from those four syllables down to one. Now I can understand you might be thinking: Well what is this alchemy? How do you take three words down to just the one word? Well as an example rather than saying something like enable grayscale mode in order to see the page without color, you might try saying enable grayscale mode to see the page without color. This next one "accordingly" or "consequently". These are sort of the triple word score of word substitutions because these are the sort of words that no one actually says in real life and yet these words turn up reports and documentation all the time. So when you come across and accordingly or consequently take that and try swapping that for "so". And by doing that they takes you from four syllables all the way down to one. So for instance one might come across an accessibility consultant saying something like this link isn't focusable consequently it isn't accessible. But rather than saying that try this on for size: This link isn't focusable so it isn't accessible. This next one is "the following" and you know what I know this may seem a little bit weird but when you come across the following you might just try swapping it for "this". And yes I know this seems maybe kind of weird like this and the following might seem sort of unrelated on the face of it, but when you make that swap that takes you from four syllables down to one. And at this point I can understand an example might be handy because these two different phrases may not seem terribly related on the face of it. But when you have something like use the guidelines in the following table, it turns out you can't just say use the guidelines in this table. Now I should also clarify that because of pluralization and so on there may be some cases where rather than saying this, you may need to go with these. And as an example of that you might have something like if the app supports the following keyboard shortcuts but you can actually just say the app supports these keyboard shortcuts. And this is the type of change that just makes these sentences so much easier to get one's head around, because these simpler versions represent the way people speak in real life. This next one is one that is an easy swamp but it can make a big difference. And that is "however". When you come across however at the beginning of a sentence you can swap that for "but" and in doing so that takes you from 3 syllables down to 1. Now I can hear what you're saying I can imagine that you're asking you know, but Ashley can I start a sentence with but? Well as the power vested in me as a copy editor and a grammar expert I could say that yes, you can absolutely start a sentence with the but. It is completely grammatical and it works. But rather than take my word for it here's one example: rather than saying something like that works in JAWS however it doesn't work in voiceover, you might try that works in JAWS but it doesn't work in voiceover. But you know what, going through these examples I hope helped a bit but with that being said when it comes to syllables there's actually one trick that makes more of a difference than any of these. And that's contractions. Now as you may be familiar contractions are things like taking do not and going to don't which takes you from two syllables to one or taking cannot two can't chase you from two syllables to one. You know what with that being said I know that some people might be a little skeptical of this. You might be thinking oh but my teacher Mrs. Crabtree she doesn't like contractions. How am I supposed to use these fancy-pants contractions? Well you know what? One of my fellow copy editors a fellow named Tom Freeman he analyzed the corpus of contemporary American English for patterns around how contractions are being used today. Now the corpoate suit American English it's a database of words it covers about two decades and four hundred and fifty million words. And it covers sources including newspapers, magazines, TV transcripts. And we're talking about major newspapers and magazines here. Things like the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Atlanta journal-constitution, NPR, CBS so we're talking about major major writing today. And here's what Tom discovered when he looked at newspapers and magazines in particular. He concentrated on newspapers and magazines because these represent how actions would be used in in writing in publish writing today. And when he looked at how they were used in sources like the New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Time magazine what he discovered is that don't be stewed almost seven times it's more often. And do not he discovered that can't he's used almost three times more often than cannot. He also found that doesn't, didn't, and won't our each use almost three times more often than their non contraction forms and these are within major newspapers, major magazines. And so with those findings that goes to show that the tide has turned. And what was once avoided in some context is now commonplace. But you know what people who study linguistics like Wayne Danielson and Dominique la Rosa they found out decades ago that contractions improve readability. On top of that style guides have been on board the contraction train for years. For instance the Chicago Manual of style says that most types of writing benefit from the use of contractions. If you thoughtfully contractions in prose how natural the relaxed make reading more enjoyable. You know what meet you're still a little bit skeptical about this. Well think of it this way if maybe you're sold I'm sure about these contractions. Think back to any sci-fi robot movie and the way that the robot talked in those at movies. Invariably movie robots end up saying stuff like I will be glad to see them if they do not get mad, rather than saying I'll be glad to see them if they don't get mad and the reason that movie robots do that is because screenwriters know that the easiest way to make anyone sound like robot is to take away all their contractions. And while that may sound like a cheap trick it works every time. So then the next time that you're writing up something at work or the next time that you're writing up a blog post ask yourself this do I want to sound like an automaton or do I want to sound like a person? So at this point you might be thinking okay well this is all well and good Ashley, but how do I check my writing? How can I see whether it's readable or not? Well there are algorithms out there based off sentence length and syllables that can calculate a reading grade level for your writing. So this represents how many years of education someone would need to be able to understand what you've written. Now I should offer a caveat here. I should clarify that these reading grade levels are based off the US education system, which for those who might be joining this presentation who aren't from the US, I'll just mention that the U.S. education grades go from 1 through 12 for public school followed by perhaps University which is usually around 4 years followed by maybe graduate school or what have you. And so when it comes to checking on what you've written, one tool that I like quite a lot is the readability analyzer. Now these ability algorithms that I'd mentioned, they're all published and available to anyone so anyone can write tools that check writing against the given algorithm. So one thing that I like about the readability analyzer is that it's web-based and it's free. And you can get to it at bit.ly/readinganalyzer. And once you load up this page, once you're loading up the readability analyzer you can use it by pasting your text content into the box. And then the site calculates your text readability numbers. You'll actually come up with a couple of different readability scores. But the readability score that I think is worth concentrating on is the Flesch–Kincaid reading grade level. And that's just because that's one of the more prominent calculations for calculating reading grades. So what our Roop would recommend is to keep your text readable aim for a Flesch–Kincaid grade level that's less than nine. Now I can understand if that might seem a little bit weird because you might be thinking okay well what if my readers have graduated from high school? Wouldn't that be twelve years? Or perhaps your readers have gone to university and which would be four years on top of that? Theoretically sixteen years of schooling? So you might be thinking okay well where does this nine come from? Well it turns out that reading grade calculations represents someone's reading level under ideal conditions. So for example if you were to have someone who's graduated from high school which in the US would be twelve years of school and maybe there are some ideal conditions perhaps they had a really great night's sleep and they remember to eat breakfast and at the office in a quiet room good lighting they don't have a care in the world. Yeah under those ideal conditions they might be able to just reach their theoretical maximum reading level, but the thing is that real life is not an ideal condition. In real life maybe you didn't sleep so good last night, maybe you ate a cookie for breakfast instead of oatmeal, or maybe you skipped breakfast maybe there was a traffic jam on the way into work? Maybe you've got fluorescent lights flickering overhead once you're in the office?