Live Session (2024)

Hello and welcome back to the penultimate session with me. There will be another two sessions with Hampus afterwards and then, you know, examination and stuff like that.

So, yeah, you’re almost through with me.

So, yay, celebration.

That's my gift to you.

But like, Humpus actually, you know, flew to Japan to do like speed golfing, which like two things I'm not interested in, like speed and golfing.

I'm more like slow hiking.

I think that's more like my sport.

So, yeah, that's why we have this relatively weird, because usually we try to do it one week campus, one week me.

But so you had me for a few weeks, and it won't stop until we get enough.

Anyway, so this is the roadmap for the rest of the year.

We had the forms stuff yesterday.

yesterday, last week.

And, you know,

and usually I do the Aria and the

forms things together,

which

I think works

better for most

of the time, but

in reality, I didn't want to

give you, like, two

super, like,

technical topics, like,

back-to-back. So, you know,

going a little bit into content for

this week.

I think makes a lot of sense and then we have the way ARIA stuff for next week and then hampers is

doing like more yeah softer topics I want to say before we have like breaks and then examination

is due week two and that's the 10th of January and I think I forgot to update the thing so I will

Let me quickly make it to do like I'm professional.

Update.

Deadline.

Easier effort.

Examination page.

Okay.

And yeah, that's like the roadmap.

So it's like you almost through.

And that's pretty exciting.

So let's talk about content today.

So first step, like every week,

did you have any questions looking at the videos?

Anything I should be explaining more in detail?

Anything, you know, we have an example

that I should look at?

Anything like that?

I see there is a raised hand already.

Jessica, go ahead.

Yes, thank you.

I actually have two questions. So my first question is, because this session you talked a lot about, you know, you should never write like look to the left and click, press the button to the left or the right and stuff like that.

but we are actually debating in my office whether you can on a page say something like

on this page the information on this page is for you if you are employed like if we have three

three pages that are the same but the information is more or less the same but it differs if you are

a student or if you are employed or if you are on parental leave let's say so we have more or less

the same page we want to structure them differently so that you can get you you can see that oh I'm

I'm in this situation I can recognize myself in this situation but we would like to write or I

would like to write I should say like on this page this information is for you as an employee or

Some of my colleagues are, oh, no, no, no, that's not accessible.

You can't do that.

You can't do that.

This is a good space to ask this question, I think.

Yeah, great question.

So, yes, you can write that because it's clear that you are on this page.

The concern is if you refer something that is only visually apparent.

Like, you know, so if you say like click the green button and I'm a screen reader user or I'm like, you know, I'm colorblind.

I cannot, I don't know what that means.

But this page, because like every page is like, you know, when it reloads, you get like the information that this is the page that's okay.

Also things like, as you can find out more information below would be okay.

Because it's like in the order of the page.

It's a relative order of the page, not like a visual spatial thing.

Well, that's great.

It's good to know.

Yeah.

So my other thing was you were showing the examples of you can use just color to convey meaning.

You have to, like in this example, you have required fields are in red and they're marked with an asterisk.

Right.

And I see this.

I think we have seen quite a few of these examples in this course.

But my question is, I think maybe this is not such a good example

because you should maybe not have a field that is not required in the first place.

So in the example that you showed today or in the video for today,

there's two fields, two input fields.

One is name, and that is not in red,

and it doesn't have an asterisk.

So what that says to me is like,

I don't have to fill in my name because it's optional.

But why is the name input field there in the first place?

You know, do you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah, no, totally.

We work a lot with this where I work.

And when I first started here a couple of years ago,

we had asterisks on every input field. And I'm like, this is cognitive overload. You can do this.

You just take them all away. And then what we do instead is if something is optional, then like,

if we have 50 questions and two are optional, well, then we can write this is optional. Like,

you know, parentheses after the, like, if it's name and then the field and then afterwards you

input like optional but you don't put asterisks on every field yeah there are different like schools

of thought um around this like you know i'm i personally like even if like every field is required

i would like put the text at the top that says like every field is required just to reinforce that

you know personally but you know there's there's no real like hard rules about this um here the

important thing is that you cannot only distinguish it uh with color so that's why why we do the asterisk

behind it um it's probably not like the best thing because like yeah in general you shouldn't ask for

optional stuff at all if you can help it you know and sometimes you you have to like you know you

have like um let's say you have a contact form you want to allow people to attach an invoice but they

don't have to have an invoice right that would be a classical optional field and probably a better

example than this um but yeah so so you know but but even then you can have like a check check box

like i want to attach a thing and then it can like pop up and then it can be like required if that

checkboxes checked so it's not like yeah so there are many many options to do this uh and that's

just the basic thing like you don't want to rely on on color alone for this like as an example

but yeah i agree like stick to one thing like either have everything required or everything

optional and then uh and then like if you if you have exceptions to that you know make that clear

Well, thank you. Yeah, awesome. Good questions. Any other questions about this? No, that's okay. Yeah, I think, you know, the most important thing is that you don't refer to stuff that's only visually perceivable.

like, you know, green triangle here, you know, like you want to have a secondary thing. Now,

there is always this exception when you have, when you are testing for different things. So,

you know, imagine you're doing a test to find out if someone is colorblind,

then you can't give them hints like, oh, you know, this is that color and this is that color,

because that like invalidates the test. And that's actually an exception in WCAG for those

use cases but everywhere else you know where it's important like you want to like refer to the to the

item like by name or you want to have like a different um uh secondary information there like

uh like you know maybe have something striped or like dotted outline or whatever you know there

many many ways to do this um but that's that's like the main thing that you don't accidentally

put something in and refer to something by color or by position um you know if you have two but

two buttons on the page like uh this is probably a good example like for your example like you have

an overview page and it says like oh this is the information for this and then you have your three

audiences you know you don't want to put into the text like if your audience one click button the

left button if your audience two press the right button if your audience three press the middle

button because that says nothing um uh but if that's like if your buttons are that badly like

labeled then you have other problems anyway so it's like it's what they know it's sometimes it's just

hard to come up with with good examples um because you know this is one of those things where i think

like yeah everyone who's like doing this and thinks a little bit about stuff realizes like

what the best ways are and so you know we rarely see someone like failing uh yeah use of color

usually we fail that but uh but the um but it's the other success criteria uh

this is my brain not working very well today um yeah the other success criteria instructions

something something instructions um doesn't like we rarely fail that because it comes up so

rarely that someone like puts in text like oh press the left button that just never happens

because like it would be really bad text um and you know most people are like or try to be

professionals so that's good all right if there are no other questions i have a little

presentation here and it's from my good acquaintance Ashley Bischoff who did this talk a couple of years

ago about like writing with plain language and this is like plain language is a little bit of a pet

of mine there is no super big like requirement in ReCac there's this triple a requirement of having

relatively simple language, but there's nothing hard in it.

And I think writing plainly and simply and straightforward

is mostly a thing that shouldn't even be an accessibility feature.

It's good for everyone, right?

And so that's why I like to bring it up.

And as you can see, this was at a time where Twitter did exist.

so

I don't know 5-6 years ago now

it's a long time but it's still like

a great presentation because I also like

how she put it up

I will not go through every step

because like I don't need to

take this from Ashley like but

I think there are a couple of like

really really great points

in there and then you can write it up and I

think there's also a video somewhere on YouTube

about it

so you know just want to be

just want to highlight some of the approaches because I think how she thinks about language

and how it works is pretty interesting and personally I feel it also works relatively well

thinking about it from that perspective for German and so I hope it also works in other

languages so you know just trying to like think about think differently about like how

how language and sentences and stuff are constructed.

So the first thing is that she asks what makes writing more complicated than other writing.

Because a lot of people who are not great writers, that includes me,

don't really understand why their writing is complicated.

So you just write and you think, oh, I understand it,

so it must be easy to understand.

but she identifies two things

and I think those are easy to look at

for determining if there is a lot going on in text

and that's sentence length and syllables

and that's what we're going to talk about.

So this is the W3C guideline

with the reading readability formula and stuff like that. And this is like the terrible sentence that is in there. Readability formulas are available for at least some languages when running the spell checkers in popular software. If you specify in the options of this engine that you want to have the statistics when it has finished checking your documents. I don't even understand that sentence. Like it's super complicated.

because it's long and there are a lot of like you know because she just told us like it's the length

of the sentence and also the syllables and there are a lot of things with like a lot of syllables

in their readability available languages are popular software is that popular in there that

makes no sense for W3C to write in there and so the more complex the things are that you want to

describe the simpler, shorter your sentences should be. Like, just make three sentences instead of one long one. And I know that, especially in English, the drive to make long sentences is always there. Like, you know, you just go to start and then you go into like commas and brackets. And then, you know, after like seven paragraphs, you have your sentence finished. So the more complex, the shorter the sentences.

And they say sentences between 20 and 25 words is what experts recommend.

And there is some variation between languages.

So Germany, we just put words together.

So, you know, it makes sense to have even less words than English.

because we just, you know, smush stuff together, and then it's like one word.

And if you use the same thinking, but you get then longer words with longer, with more syllables in it.

So, you know, you can have less, or you need to have less words in a sentence.

But you also want variety, so that it's readable.

So, you know, a few 35-word sentences and some three-word sentences, something like that.

You know, just, just, you know, don't, don't do the same thing over again because otherwise it feels like a robot.

Uh, so, uh, she splits it into two different sentences and that is readability formulas are often available when running the spell checker in your word processor.

You can specify options to show those statistics when it's finished checking your content.

oh, this is much clearer already, and it's not, like, you know, that much simplified, so,

so, yeah, this was one, like, eye-opening thing, and, like, everyone who, like, works with language,

and is better than I am in, like, writing, is probably going, like, you know, of course it is,

like, but, you know, not everyone is, so I think it's, really, that was really eye-opening,

And I started making much shorter sentences.

Syllables, on the other hand, are the other half of the battle.

And she says it's basically like Tetris pieces.

So if you have a word with less syllables, it's like very simple Tetris pieces.

So like one by one squares or one by two squares or something like that. If you have more syllables, you get like more, more pixels in there. So it's getting like more and more complicated.

one syllable word like so is a two block Tetris piece.

And then if you have two syllable words like update,

it's a three block Tetris piece.

And then if you have three syllable words,

they are like five block Tetris pieces.

So, you know, which is like for us Tetris purists,

you only can have four block Tetris pieces.

But like, you know, this is hypothetical.

This is not the real Tetris.

I think I have to say that

but yeah so

and these like five block Tetris pieces

get really unwieldy because they can

have edges and so

if you put them into sentences right

it will make

there's just less room

to put in like

many of those complicated

forms

into your sentence

but you can have like many more

simpler things

and then you have 4 syllable words which are like 7 block tetris pieces and you don't want to have those because they're even more complicated.

And then you have 5 syllable words and yeah that's like nothing you want to have like 8 blocks with those. Not good.

Some long words are unavoidable. And we know that because we talk about accessibility all the time. And that's like a forcible word. So it's tough. And like, whenever you write about accessibility, every like, word, like, like, analyzation tool is going like, oh, this is a very complex sentence.

and I'm like yeah but this is the word I have to use this so you know you try to make the rest

around it like simple um yeah you know the less like complicated words you have the easier it is

uh and one of the things that we see is uh corporate speak words versus like plain words uh and

I think that's also like a really really important thing that like corporate speak like encourages us to use more difficult words

and like there's some examples here like prior to before so you have prior to are two syllables and before is one syllable

so you go oh prior to is even three syllables i'm really bad at counting syllables this will this

will show in this presentation so you know don't don't like take the so from three syllables to two

so that's that's what i actually want to say b4 yeah that makes sense um and uh you know i proofread

the report prior to the meeting i proofread the report prior to the meeting because i proofread

the report before the meeting and the sentence gets immediately a little bit simpler. It's not a big

change, but it helps a lot. Commence versus start. The meeting commences from two syllables to one.

We will commence user interviews on Tuesday. We will start user interviews on Tuesday. I don't

think anyone like in this part of the hemisphere uses like commands but yeah. Sufficient, that's

one I like to use a lot. Enough, you can just use enough for that. So you go from three syllables

to two again, which makes it better. We don't have sufficient stuff to run a beta test. We

don't have enough stuff to run a beta test.

No, it's small, small stuff.

In order to, that's one of my pet peeves that I don't like to see when people are

using it, you can just use two, which goes from four syllables to one, which is a big,

big difference.

Just drop down in order to select a flight, use the drop down to select a flight.

Don't need in order to.

accordingly or consequentially

so from four syllables to one

you know we lost power consequentially our side is down

we lost power so our side is down like you don't know it can be

really like much shorter than that

the following this much better from four to one

however

but and this is like one of the things where like Ashley is like yeah you can use

prepositions at the beginning of the sentence like you know

three syllables to one

that works in Firefox however it doesn't work in IE

that works in Firefox but it doesn't work in IE

much simpler

And there's another trick that makes more of a difference than any of these and that is contractions.

So instead of using do not use don't, cannot can't. And yeah, contractions are used in business and

everywhere as well. Like this is like where I will speed through this because like it's not,

well i don't find it too interesting uh basically there's a lot of people like in english business

speak that say like oh no you have to say can cannot instead of can't um but in reality like

uh this already is like uh it's not even close anymore so if you can contract stuff you know it

can help uh i guess even if you are using like you know some slang terms that are contracting

things that might help because I don't think I don't I don't know about Swedish but in Germany we don't

really have a lot of those contractions so so I don't think this super applies yeah so it's

It's commonplace.

And you don't want to sound like a robot again.

Yeah.

Invariably, movie robots end up saying stuff like,

I will be glad to see them if they do not get mad.

Which is like, oh, they write out everything.

Instead of saying, I'll be glad to see them if they don't get mad.

It's like, yeah, it makes much more human sense.

So yeah, removing contractions is an easy way to like,

let people sound like robots.

I would need to like think about how it would be done in German

if there's like specific like trait like that,

but I don't think so.

I want to sound like a person.

And there are different readability like reading analyzers and the links are of course always as always in the on the page with the video and uploaded.

So you can look through the presentation and also click on all the links.

So she talks a little bit about these flash Kinkade reading rate scores.

I don't like them and they don't work for other languages. So, you know, don't get too like in these details because it's like, it doesn't make too much sense.

Of course, W3C stuff doesn't do well, but you want to make sure that you get low ratings.

But I don't think the ratings are super useful, to be honest.

And I get into what I like to do in a second.

Don't ever worry about the reading grade being too low.

Nobody has ever complained about something being too easy to read.

I mean, you want to use professional language, or you want to use the language that is appropriate to people looking at your site.

Like if you talk about a specific, like let's say medicine topic, you don't want to say, you know, I don't know, you know, find different words for things that are common for that audience.

But you don't want to like, you know, every little bit of making it easier to read helps.

Yeah, so aim for an average sentence length of 20-ish words.

Keep an eye out for those three and four-syllable words.

Use contractions early and often.

And double-check your reading level with a tool.

I think that's fair to say.

Yeah, and I will put up the stuff on the links online.

So you find this talk at bit.ly/plainslides. And then there's also this list of simpler words, which I tried to open in the background.

Then it downloaded a PDF. What is this? Oh, I think this list is gone. But Wikipedia has also a list of simpler words.

no this is also gone

oh great like as I said

this is a little bit old

but there are lists out there

and I guess if you go to plainlanguage.gov

you might still

find like until like

the 20th of January you still

might find like good

advice there

mainlanguage.gov, there you go. Samples. Yeah, they basically have the same or very similar guidelines.

Here, use simple words and phrases. So you have the same things like "accompany", "go with", "accomplish", "carry out" or "do", "accorded", "given". I don't think I have ever used the word accorded. I was accorded a cake. No, I was given a cake.

It's like, yeah, but there are some like, like really interesting things in there and like a really long list with things that you can say in like very simpler, in simpler terms. So you should.

Let me keep that open so I can link that as well.

Yeah, and here's be concise as well.

And that is able to use CAN on a monthly basis.

Monthly be responsible for must.

Very good.

And there are a lot of resources for this out there for other languages.

as well. Now, I don't speak Swedish, but I've seen this PDF recommended and I will put links into,

and I see nodding heads, so it's a known resource. That's good. And also this one,

I don't know if that's the same, but basically that gives you, I think it's a list of words that you

should not use if I'm correct. And then I've also been recommended last time when I did this course,

this book was recommended as a handbook for like simple language. So I've not read it. I couldn't.

So that's just what I wanted to say.

Some additional information from Jessica.

Swedish, the recommendation is 10 to 20 words in a sentence, not more than 25.

I think that sounds about right for Swedish, because you also have these long words in between.

"A very long of sentences, should not use short sentences." Yeah, that makes sense. Like not, not exclusively. Yeah, can sound aggressive if you use short sentences. Yeah, and there's another book recommendation in the chat as well, which I will now click on. So I, then I will copy it.

into the right window and then I will put that into the recommendation too. It's fun. Like,

every time I do this, I get like one more Swedish like recommendation for those. And

I think it's pretty important. Like you can do so much for accessibility in like tech technically,

but if your text is hard to read, like it's just like why even bother, right? So yeah,

I think this is awesome.

Yeah.

And this is a tool that was recommended.

Don't really remember who recommended it,

but basically to test your, like how difficult it is.

So that's also in there, licks.se.

So that's good.

For English, the thing that most people recommend is Hemingway app, which I don't like it.

So that's what you get for having me and me always being honest.

First, they have done a lot of like, oh, you don't have to pay for stuff.

This used to be much more simple.

I think it's great that they have these different colors.

But it's also like they just tell you what's wrong.

and then you can fix it with AI, some machine learning, which is a good thing to have.

But you always have to get into this editor and put stuff in there and then do it.

But they have a classic desktop app that you can use,

And that is a good way to at least check those things.

Manfred.

Yeah, so a question here.

Do they use color alone to convey?

So I would assume red is the worst problems?

Yes, good spot.

But there's no icon or anything separating the colors, right?

Not really.

I mean, here on the right, it says one of 13 sentences.

It's very hard to read.

But if you can't see the color, yeah, it's not the most accessible

thing to use.

You would need to click on the eye

and see what gets highlighted or not.

Like the yellow against the light gray there is also not the most

contrasty thing.

So yeah.

And if it's conveys priority, it doesn't really--

you don't know what it is.

Yeah, it says red is very hard.

And what is that?

Yellow is hard.

It does say in the text, right.

Yeah, that's true.

So yeah, but it's like--

there's no clear-- you click on it, it just says readability

issue.

It doesn't give you the sentences, how to read,

or if I click on this, too hard to read.

It has some more content, but it's like...

No, it's the same text,

so it's not even super useful for that.

Then you get the readability grade,

which I'm not the biggest fan,

just because we see that often with people who are neurodiverse,

that their writing style gets picked up as bad writing,

and that can lead to discrimination and stuff like that,

so you don't want to just lean on that.

And so, yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of these grades and stuff.

That always feels weird.

What I use, and this is not an advertisement,

because they don't pay me enough, because they don't pay me at all.

It's language tool, I really like that, because it's like all local,

and it works very well.

The most important thing, it works across languages,

so you can choose the language that you want,

like Austrian, German, if you want to do that,

or Swedish is there as well, which is good.

And then you know you can write your text and it gets corrected and if you install the desktop app it will also do it like in your emails or in your slack and stuff like that and I think that's very useful because then you have like that feedback loop.

And they have like really good ways to underline things. So this is how it looks. And then like there's too much. And because we're in American English, colors should only have one O.

and here we have a spelling error another one and here we have like in a reliable manner

where it's like just reliably you know that's the Tetris thing in action and you can just say

reliably in there and it does support like some things like splitting up sentences you know

paraphrasing here on the right as well. I don't use these things that are like all built as AI tools

too much, but sometimes it's useful when you write something out really quick and you go like,

oh, I don't like how this sounds. You know, I want to paraphrase it or want to simplify it

or to make it more formal. You know, never really use this, but like,

It's an impressive versatile tool, especially if you'd like to tell a colleague from overseas about what's happened at 5 p.m. in the afternoon on Monday, May 2007.

And that gets simplified to it's a great tool for telling a friend what happened at 5 p.m. on Monday, May 2007.

And then you click it once and it just replaces it.

And I think that's nice.

And I don't use it usually to just like give me stuff,

but I like that it just highlights things that could be better.

And then I make the decision like, oh, you know,

furthermore is a terrible word.

Let's, oh, and should have a comma.

Furthermore is also like a very common thing that, you know,

comes out of chat GPT generated text and stuff.

So it's like, if you see that, it's like a little bit like suspect.

And yeah, so that's really what I like and do.

And yeah, if you use the premium and the local stuff,

I think it works very well to like,

just remind you while you type on like,

oh, there's this thing and that thing.

And you can switch picky mode on and off.

So that's always nice. I think I corrected everything. It's there, like having double clicking. Sometimes it's also like, oh, this is fun. This is new. I didn't. This date is wrong. Did you mean 2024? I don't know if I meant 2024. What's that? Like, probably too much.

too much ai um but yeah it's really good uh and you know it's it's like i i like because

i can switch from german to english very easily um helps me with that um and yeah and my writing is

terrible so it's good i can i can take every um every help that i that i can get to like just

just remind me and improve myself because you know in in reality what i'd like to do like if

if I had all the money in the world is like I would have an editor that like looks through all my stuff

and like writes it better than I can but I'm like it's not not the money I have so it's like it's

like okay this this tool needs to be it's to be good enough you know and sometimes you you find

stuff and you go like no that's exactly not what I wanted to say or I wanted to use like

sometimes when I write blog posts I use so this this is like the other side of the thing like

sometimes you want to write something a little bit more complicated to make the reader slow down

and read it like more carefully so you know you might want to say like oh I put in like a

multisyllable word instead of saying the easy word just to slow them down because i'm making a point

here um and then these grammar checkers will say like oh no you want to like give them the simple

thing but you know sometimes you you don't actually want that um and so yeah it's like like you know

Feel free to have a style and be like, yeah, just straightforward to doing that.

All right.

I have one thing open from last year that I don't know why I do have that.

And that's the screen reader shortcuts.

I don't know if I shared that to you.

If not, I will put them there in the list anyway, because it's like an open tab.

But I think last year someone asked about how to use screen readers and stuff.

And I'm not using one for testing or on a daily basis.

So I always look at Deque and see what the shortcuts are if I use them.

Especially if I don't use them all the time.

All right. Any questions? Anything else I should be talking about? Because, yeah, this is, I think this is a very straightforward thing, you know, just a reminder of, like, structure your content, make it simple. Don't, like, make things too complicated, explain your abbreviations, all of that stuff.

So I don't think there's a lot like additional stuff to explain.

But like it's things that you should do, but you never or like or you rarely like think about it like consciously.

Like everything is like subconsciously going on when you write stuff and when you create content.

And so, you know, I think it's an important topic and it deserves like that one week slot.

but yeah I don't have like anything more prepared so

questions or comments

or anyone wants to yell at me it's like we're making space for that

I have a comment or question around the large language models is another word sometimes for conversational AI right

right so um you know using that for uh writing more uh concise or short and better what's your

take on that yeah i mean that's basically what all these writing tools are using uh like these are

all like in the background they're all large language models because that's actually where

these large language models are really good at is like, Oh, I look at things and then I look at like,

my understanding of like how things should be. And then I compare that, like that's, that's

basically the prime thing. And like, if you, if you're using an iPhone or Mac, like the, the

built in stuff is also based on large language models. So if you, if you write something and you

you have those suggestions. It's all large language models. And I think they are hit and miss. And so

you have to always use critical thinking. But I think, yeah, for this type of stuff,

where you basically say, oh, this is my text. And like, please help me a little bit. I think that,

yeah, it's fair. It's pretty fair game. I think what they have here too, like the,

oh, I click on this and I want to make it more formal

or more like just paraphrase it or stuff like that.

I don't like that functionality too much

because it's like, yeah,

it doesn't feel like me writing this anymore.

But yeah, sometimes it's a good thing to do

or just to get an idea of like,

how would this sentence sound more formal?

And then you can always say like,

That's weird.

All right.

Then let's call it a day.

And thank you very much.

Take good care.

Have a good rest of your week.

Now it's getting very technical with Aria stuff.

So good luck.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye-bye.