As a blog content creator, one of your goals is to ensure that your content is reaching as many people as possible. Keeping your blog accessible will help prevent people from being excluded from your content. Knowing where to start can be difficult even if you’re already familiar with accessibility and best practices, so here are five ways to make your blog more accessible right now.
Content is the heart of any blog, so writing with accessibility in mind should be a top priority. Using simple language that can be understood at a range of reading levels will further your reach. Tools like Hemingway App can help you analyze the readability of your content. Sticking to a well-defined style and format will also improve the accessibility of your content, so creating and following a style guide can help ensure your audience has a consistent experience even when reading the content of multiple writers. Use informative titles and subtitles to ensure the focus of the content is clear, and use descriptive text for links instead of phrases like “click here” so readers have a better idea of where links will take them. This is also helpful for those using screen readers as they’re checking multiple links from the page, a list of links with generic text won’t be very informative. WCAG Guideline 3.1 and the Plain Language Association provide more guidance on keeping content easy to read and understand.
Keeping content well-organized and consistently structured will also help your audience know what to expect when visiting your blog. If you create specific series or styles of content, sticking to a specific structure or creating a template will help things feel more cohesive. When deciding how to structure things, be sure to organize content based on how important or relevant it is. Making use of headings and HTML5 elements to organize and label content will help improve navigation, especially for those navigating using the keyboard, using screen readers, or using other assistive technologies.
The first principle of the WCAG guidelines focuses on making sure content can be perceived, which will help make sure your audience isn’t missing anything you want to share with them. It’s best to avoid conveying important information through non-text content—like text embedded in images—whenever possible. Use alt-text to describe images, include captions with video, and provide transcripts for audio content.
Contrast is one of the primary accessibility considerations for websites, and since you want readers to be able to comfortably read your content, it’s especially important on a blog. A 3:1 ratio is recommended as the minimum level of contrast for text. If colors are used to separate different sections of the page, make sure to consider the contrast between them as well, but it would be best to avoid using color alone to distinguish between these sections and use descriptive elements to label them instead.
There’s no single definition for what makes a font accessible, but it’s recommended to use fonts that are legible, simple, and non-decorative, so widely-available sans-serif fonts are often recommended for web content. 12 point is usually the minimum recommended font size, but using larger font sizes, such as 16 point, can help make content more readable. Additionally, be sure to use language and organization to convey the importance of information instead of relying on styling like italicization or bolding.
The digital landscape is always changing, and so are the expectations and requirements for meeting the highest accessibility standards, but following these five tips will help make your blog more accessible now and create a strong foundation for continued improvement into the future.