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 corporate 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? Maybe there's some sales guy on his cell phone down the hallway? Maybe there's a leaf blower running outside maybe you're worried about how your kids gonna do on their math test on Tuesday? All of these factors tend to tug down for a maximum reading level so what this means is that for most people they can comfortably read at around 5 grades below their theoretical maximum reading level. So in the United States for someone to graduate from high school which would be 12 years you can start to see how this nine comes into play because while they theoretically might under ideal conditions be able to read at a twelfth grade level there are no ideal conditions. Life is not ideal and so chances are grade 9 would be they're more comfortable reading level. In fact there's research that backs us up too or that Doak and Doak, when they study this discovered that yeah about 4 to 5 years below. So its maximum education level is about the ceiling for where most people can comfortably read from day to day.

So at this point you know I thought back to those that terrible WCAG sentence from earlier I thought: hey let's put that through the readability analyzer to see what we come up with. And it comes up with a Flesch–Kincaid reading grade level of 12. So this means of course that for someone who's graduated from high school they wouldn't be able to understand that sentence because it's far above their average reading level. You know what this also means is that suppose someone went to high school and then university so theoretically under ideal conditions they might have 16 years of schooling but once you subtract five years of that to account for everyday conditions, it turns out you know what they would struggle with this sentence too. So if you've ever been reading through WCAG or other W3C documentation and if you've been thinking yourself man how do I get my head around this am I just a dummy? Well it's not you it's the writing.

So at this point might be wondering well how does this play out in real life? How does this affect the real world? Well here's something to think about. Have you ever wondered how well emergency weather alerts might go over if they were written at a college reading grade level? Well that's actually what happened.

Researchers studied weather alerts from the National Weather Service and yeah it turns out that they're writing at a college reading level. So here's one example of an actual weather alert. It says we are becoming optimistic that the Carolinas and the mid-atlantic states will avoid the direct effects of hurricane Joaquin. However we cannot yet completely rule out direct impacts along the East Coast and residents there continue to follow the progress of Joaquin over the next couple of days. You know what that paragraph has a Flesch–Kincaid reading grade level of thirteen point four. So that means that someone who's gone to high school probably wouldn't really be able to understand that. Of course what this also means is that because life isn't an ideal condition that people with a college education probably would also struggle to get their heads around that.

So think of it this way we've had a couple of big hurricanes over the past year such as in Houston and Puerto Rico and sometimes you hear in the news about how some people haven't evacuated and you know it's easy to blame the victim. It's it's easy to say to yourself oh they should have known. Why did they leave there's a hurricane coming? But when you think of it in this light when you consider that they may not have understood the warnings that were being given to them. And some people they may have stayed behind because they weren't able to understand what was being said about the impending danger. And the effect of all this is that because the National Weather Service has this hoity-toity writing style that may have caused people lives because there may have been some people who didn't really know how dire the situation was. And it wasn't their fault that they weren't able to understand this because it was written at a far higher reading grade level than even someone with a college education would be expected to understand right away.

So with that being said you know can we do any better? So what I did was I took a stab at this weather alert from the National Weather Service and I thought you know let's try some of these techniques. Let's try breaking it into smaller sentences. Let's try using fewer syllables.

Let's try introducing some contractions and let's see if it might be any easier to read. So here's what I came up with: Chances are getting better that Joaquin won't affect the Carolinas or the states from New York through Virginia. But we can't yet rule out that the East Coast could still be affected. So those can live on the East Coast should keep following our updates about we're keep over the next few days. So some of the changes for example is that rather than referring to be mid-atlantic states because who knows what that means I spelled out New York through Virginia.

I also took that however at the beginning of that one sentence and changed for bud and I incorporate some contractions there. And you know this revised version how well did it do? Well this one has a Flesch–Kincaid reading grade level of seven point six. So this means that there's a very good chance that someone with a high school education will be able to understand that warning. Which brings me to a bonus tip. You know you might be seeing that seven point six and maybe you're thinking well that's kind of low wasn't it? Seven is that right? Well I can reassure you don't ever worry about a reading grade being quote unquote "too low". Don't think that because you're writing for someone at a college education level that your writing also has to be at a college level. And that's because when you when you do this when you write whatever you main writing aim for a reading grade level, that's the most inclusive. Lower numbers are almost always better when it comes to this. And that's because no one has ever complained that something was too easy to read. So if you're writing something and you run it through the readability analyzer and it comes up with a reading grade of maybe five or six or seven that's great good work. You've done it!

So let's recap:
When you're writing try to aim for an average sentence length of 20 some words. On top of that keep an eye out for any three and four syllable words. I say that because when you're perhaps just starting out with this it can be kind of intimidating. If you're facing perhaps an entire port and you're thinking I don't even know where to start. Well as a starting point try to look for those three and four syllable words to see if you can correct those. Because any little bit helps. On top of that use contractions early and often and which what I would also recommend is double-checking what you've written. If you are using the readability analyzer you can check on its reading grade level and that's a good way to sort of a sanity check to see whether your writing is suitable for your audience.

Thanks a bunch.

I'll mention a couple of links here I said earlier that all my slides are online and they are online right now. You can get to these slides at bit.ly/bettera11y. There's also that list of simpler words from plain language gov and that's at bit.ly/plainwords. and then there's Wikipedia's list of simpler words. Which you wouldn't think of Wikipedia as being a great resource for such a thing, but it actually has a pretty great list too of complex words along with simpler alternatives. And lastly if you may be interested you can follow me on Twitter. I talk about language @FriendlyAshley and I also talk about accessibility @handcoding and you could follow me at either or both of those. And just to put this out there, if you're dipping your toes into the plain language waters and your trying to get a feel for things, you know if you have some questions about I doing this right or is this the right direction to go with this sentence is this sentence a good simpler version. You know, you feel free to tweet me anytime I'm happy to help out or even if you have a particularly thorny sentence and you're like I know this is hard to read but I don't know how to fix it. You come across one of those feel free to tweet it to me I'll be happy to lend a hand.

Because you know plain language is really about about the long game much like accessibility. As a whole and I feel that each time we can make improvements in they might be smaller improvements at first, each improvement helps get us to where we're going. Thank you very much.

Thank you very for presenting today. I have a few questions from the audience and some I've seen on Twitter and Slack so I'll ask those first. But again and just a reminder to anyone who may have a question about Ashley's talk. Put them in the chat window on the side if you're going live or if you're on Twitter you can do it again at #a11ytalks so at A-1-1-Y-T-A-L-K-S.

So the first question I have is from AmyJune and Jeff: What are some of the differences between written and spoken accessibility and do they matter as much as spoken word?

I know we talked a little bit more about writing. I think there's actually a great question and I think that so often when people are writing it could be easy to get inside your own head. I can be easy to think to yourself this is important so it should sound important that quote unquote whatever that might mean. But you know what one of the best ways to make your writing approachable is to imagine that you're at maybe a neighbor's barbecue sitting across a picnic table from your neighbor and you're just talking to them about this topic. And sometimes I'll even imagine to myself okay just kind of pantomiming how would I say this to someone in real life? And then I write down those words. And it may seem like kind of a simple thing but it can make a huge difference. So I think both writing and speaking I mean they're both important but I think a lot of people have perhaps an innate ability to speak clearly but sometimes you easy to get tangled up when it comes to writing. But by using that sort of trick you can kind of take what you would have said and ready town that can actually work.

Yeah and that kind of goes along those same lines of when do you use this approach? Are you are you talking about using this approach in everyday? All kinds of content? Prose like essays? Twitter? I mean, I know we're chatting a little bit and you'll have to catch up later. I know you're presenting but contractions for instance, I was taught years ago to not use contractions formally. To spell them all out. Is that just something we should just ignore? Buck the tradition?

Right right, so as we had alluded some people were taught in years past that contractions weren't as good but contractions are actually great. Because contractions represent the way that we speak in real life. And the way I think of it is that suppose you're on a conference call with a client it wouldn't be unusual to say I don't think we'll have to reschedule the meeting. That would be a normal thing to say. And if that's good enough for a conference call with the client, why not if you have to write an email to a client you could just as easily say I don't think we'll need to reschedule the meeting. And so yeah I think that plain language and more straightforward ways of communicating are suitable for everything because in a manner of thinking about it, I would only use plain language when you want people to understand what you're saying. So in other words all the time. So if you're writing tweets, if you're writing a report, if you're writing out documentation, if you're writing up a specification please for the love of God, write it in plain language because what that helps people do is it helps your readers understand what you're trying to get across.

Well and that kind of ties into this new question from Andrew in the chat box. He asks how about long words that are well-known, say vegetarian, which is five syllables but seen everywhere like cafes, for markets, magazines. Would those rules apply to them as well?

It's almost the same thing as accessibility right? Where someone would use a11y or use an acronym. Sure I think that vegetarian is a great example perhaps like accessibility of a word that doesn't really have a suitable shorter version. And like a Tetris game that has the occasional larger piece if you have writing that occasionally has a larger word like vegetarian or accessibility that could be okay and quite understandably if you're writing about accessibility, it might be unavoidable to not use accessibility so I think these longer words when used occasionally and if there's no other good option for substitutes it can be fine.

Alright I was just asking to see if there's any more questions for Ashley today. Any last minute questions? I mean this has been a great presentation I know that internally at my organization Hook 42, a lot of people wanted to come to this presentation and I was surprised and Twitter all the people who wanted to come to this presentation and if they can't come today they would want to watch the YouTube video later. Because this is something that affects people beyond just the development process and beyond when you think about accessibility, and those are probably the first two things you think about but this is a way for those people who maybe aren't doing direct design and development to be involved in the accessibility process. So this is wonderful I'm glad that you've given this talk and given them an opportunity to learn more about how they can contribute also.

Yeah it's my pleasure and just to touch a little you were saying I think I agree absolutely that for people who perhaps aren't developers themselves or don't work with as much on the development side of things planning which is a great way that they too can lend a hand and help out. That maybe you don't feel comfortable writing the specification or some documentation but perhaps you might be able to help out with going back through documentation as written and maybe helping to make it easier for other people to understand. I think that is something that helps everyone.

And similarly likewise for people who are developers and people who are perhaps writing specifications or documentation I think they too could make use of this sort of thing because it makes their recommendations that much easier for other people to get their head around. That's definitely true and you alluded earlier to some of the the WCAG 2.0 guidelines and W3C guidelines and how they can become very wordy and so it's nice to have somebody in the middle to kind of translate that into everyday speak. And say okay what is this really saying? And how can I because they want to you know get that guideline they want to check that box off they wanted to do that at that point but they don't actually really fully understand what exactly they're asking. So I love this idea of translating, like the developers translating some of that. Exactly right fantastic.

Well I had a wonderful time and thank you for inviting me. Yeah thank you and just a reminder all those links are on the side in the chat window they'll also be part of the recording on YouTube later, so you can have many opportunities to get them.

And if not tweet at #a11ytalks or at Ashley again. Those links are in the chat box so do that and I think any follow-up questions. I just saw another question. Oh sure we have time. Susan T was asking would you consider a linear organization of sentences and using active versus passive to be part of the plain language?

That's a great question I think that for instance with active versus passive just to recap for some if you're not quite familiar with that...when a sentence uses passive voice the noun that applies to the verb is obscured. So one example is that politicians I was like to say that mistakes were made. So you have "were made" but it doesn't describe who made the mistakes and so that's an example of passive voice. One way that you can check whether a sentence uses passive voice is to hypothetically add "by zombies" at the end of it. So for example we've got is the sentence with mistakes were made can you add by zombies? Well mistakes are made by zombies. Yes follow up that is passive voice. So as you might guess passive voice obscures who the actor is, who the person doing the verb is. And so in that example, if they were say a government Commissioner and it would be clearer and more forthright to say our department made mistakes rather than mistakes were made. So I think that yeah absolutely using the active voice to be a great way of making things clearer. And just to give another quick example of how this can apply to accessibility, perhaps you're describing that an attribute perhaps aria-expanded was changed from true to false. If you had steps in a process that said and the attribute was changed from true to false that obscures who changed it. And in that example if perhaps a beginner developer was reading that they might not understand who has to change that they might get the impression that only the browser does that on their own. But if you instead say and then the developers JavaScript changes this attribute from true to false let me makes it much more clear who's the one doing the doing. So I think the passive voice can be sometimes a bit thorny and active voice can go a long way.

I love your tip the "by zombies". I feel like that may need to be added to your talk. Yes thank you thank you. No that's a wonderful question and thank you everyone for your questions. So we'll just wrap it up by saying that accessibility talks happens every month and it will have a new speaker next month. I'm talking probably about JavaScript and react and we're finalizing the details on dates and times and stuff but keep in tune. Oh well I'll let you know. But thank you again Ashley for speaking today and again all the links will be up on the YouTube video. Great I had a wonderful time. Thank you bye yay!