Making Documentation Accessible to Users With Disabilities  

Good documentation takes into account the needs of people with disabilities. Such documentation is termed 'accessible' and provides support for the assistive technologies used by people with disabilities. For example, accessible documentation provides a text equivalent for each graphic element, such as a picture, flow diagram, or icon. This provision is necessary for users who rely on screen readers to read the documentation.

Chappell, Gail B. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Documentation>Accessibility>Technical Writing

National Policies for Government Web Writers

Every country has its own requirements for public sector web sites. Legislation and policies vary greatly, and express an attitude. I base my Quality Web Content workshops for government web content writers on the policy of the country concerned. Some countries consider that an accessible site requires accessible writing. Others don't.

McAlpine, Rachel. Quality Web Content (2004). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Writing

Writing for the Disadvantaged Reader  

Technical communicators usually write professsionally for both technical people and the general public. Within both of these groups are disadvantaged readers. Disadvantaged readers include natives of countries where the primary language is other than English, prelingually deaf persons, and persons with alexia, aphasia, dyslexia and/or schizophrenia. This paper briefly reviews the syntax of English and recommends language strictures that will facilitate communication to the groups of people listed above, not visual impairment.

Malcolm, Andrew. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Writing>Accessibility

Writing for Those Born Deaf  

Persons who are born hearing-impaired or who become hearing-impaired during the critical early language learning years of life often have deficient vocabulary development and difficulty reading certain language structures. A panel of educators of the hearing-impaired will present their views on the needs of prelingually deaf and hard-of-hearing readers and the moderator will focus the discussion on writing techniques which technical communicators might use communicate to those with such language deficits.

Malcolm, Andrew and Carl Kirchner. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Writing>Accessibility

Best Practices: Writing for Accessibility

Most of the time, the primary focus of information about accessibility has to do with making non-text information available as text. Captioning and audio description for video, transcriptions for audio, simple text alternatives for static images. But what about the content itself?

Dolson, Joe. Accessible Web Design (2008). Articles>Accessibility>Web Design>Writing

New Accessibility Guidelines Part III: Understandability

The understandability of text is crucial to web accessibility. At broad levels, this means specifying text languages, explaining the meanings of jargon or idioms, and expanding abbreviations to clarify text. It's not just text that can present a barrier to accessibility, however. A lack of organizational predictability or proper error management can greatly decrease the accessibility of any website.

Dolson, Joseph C. Practical eCommerce (2009). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Writing