Editors are concerned with usability of the words they work on, and usually that means making them accessible to readers. The challenge is that editors are highly literate people. They don’t always understand how difficult reading is for most people. Editors make sense of some of the most complex … [Read more...]
Alternatives to Paragraphs
A big block of text can be impenetrable to the reader. When that paragraph contains instructions, or lots of details, it can be even harder to read. But there are techniques we can use to make the prose easier to take in. They’re techniques advocated by the Plain Language principles for this very … [Read more...]
Testing Visual Accessibility
Is this going to be visible to readers with visual impairments? What about to those who have color blindness? There are three general reasons these questions are important: ease of use, accessibility laws that may be in place, and addressing the needs of your target users. Roughly 285 million … [Read more...]
Freedom to Read Begins with Access
“There is no freedom to read if you can’t afford to buy books to read,” Laura May said in explaining why Ottawa’s Twice Upon a Time gives books to children in the city’s most at-risk neighbourhoods. I spoke with May, a program volunteer in Canada’s capital city, about why owning a book is key … [Read more...]