Live Session (2025-26)

Uh, hello and welcome back to this um week's uh lecture on uh content. I mean you saw the lecture in the video uh in the videos but now uh talking a little bit about like uh your questions that you might have, anything that like is unclear, anything you want might want to have clarified. Now when you looked at the video, I don't know if you watched them in order or, you know, however. Don't uh not not my my decision to do. Um but you might have uh noticed that like last week we had a very like technical topic uh with the um with the forms and stuff like that and then uh this week uh it's like more Yeah, a lighter topic uh with the um with the uh content and then you know we're going on to do uh some uh some more technical stuff next week with the uh ARIA topic, which is probably well, it's I know that it is like the most technical thing that we're going to talk about So um but also like super important to understand. So that's why I think this is a good like Little reprieve, a little bit like a breather of a topic, so you don't get like, you know, your brain doesn't go like into like, oh, I'm not a programmer, what what am I doing here uh mode so uh that's that's why I like to like put this content uh block in the middle. So um any questions about like what we've seen in the videos, any questions about like you know how to organize the content, any examples that you want me to talk about. Um the floor is yours uh and you can uh you know this is a good good time to ask questions about that. And also if you have questions about last week or whatever, you know, always always a good time to ask.

Yeah, I have a question about the success criteria 3. 1. 6 about pronunciation. Like I am a co-webmaster on this website for an Aikido club. So we have some Japanese terminology. And like how important is it really to have pronunciation stuff in there? People reading there, they will probably expect some Japanese words and also it was a triple A so I guess it's not the most important to focus on but yeah I wonder how I should approach it

Yeah, that's a it's a it's a good question. Um and as you say it's a triple A criterion, I'm gonna share it so that like we can all see What is so 316? Um and basically it says a mechanism is available for identifying speech pronunciation specific pronunciation of words where the meaning of words in context is ambiguous without knowing the pronunciation. So this is first and foremost not about foreign languages Like this has nothing to do with like, but you know, you might have something that is like adapted into the language that you're speaking, like you know, in Germany we say handy for a mobile phone Um and it's not pronounced like you would say the word in German. That would be handy on and that nobody would say that. And it's like actually embarrassing uh to say it like that. So Good job. But but like yeah, in in those cases um you might want to have pronunciation guide, but The most important part here is that the pronunciation would make the word ambiguous. So basically this, even though it's only a triple A success criterion Actually, you only need to do it if like pronouncing it differently makes a meaningful change to the content of the page. So you know, if you have um something that is written the same way, but like spoken in different ways. Um English has that a lot of times. Um Actually, probably more the other way around, like things that are said the same way are are written like in different ways and stuff like that. But this is for for words that have like the same written um uh uh are are written the same way and are pronounced differently and then have different meaning. And I think it's a very, very specific success criterion. Um so specific that I've never come across uh like any uh places where I was like, oh, this would be a great way, you know, even if I do like AA testing, what which I usually do, but I think I've never come across a word where I was like, oh, this is like a good example of this. Um The understanding document should have an example. Um Yeah, so they have basically la like the uh the idea that you have like um different Japanese characters, uh Kana next to Han characters, and then um that show the pers the pronunciation of a person's name, right? Uh stuff like that. But yeah, I think this this is very specific. So yeah, I don't know. I th I think doing nothing in that case is probably the right thing to do. But it's a good question, so I appreciate that. I I don't think a lot about triple A criteria, so when when someone comes comes with them it's always fun to like look at them. All right, any other questions Going. Going gun. Okay. Um that's totally fine. Um yeah, um a lot of the things uh I talk about in this type of uh on on the in this week is about like making your content easier to understand and easier to like to read and use uh on a daily basis. And I have uh so this is a presentation I crept from Ashley Bischoff, um who I would consider like a very good acquaintance Um and she did this uh presentation a couple of years ago. Uh and I uh I think it's a really good way to think about like language, especially in this case about English language, but I think like the concepts, the core concepts are um good to know uh and understand. for any language. And we will get into like a little bit of more like I have a couple of links for Swedish resources, which I don't understand. So you know bear with me um but um but who who I have I have been told that they are really good resources so and I tr I trust the people who told me that. So the question that you need to like ask yourself or that you can ask yourself when thinking about language and how that works with um what you what you write and how to make it understandable is like what in my language in my writing makes it actually hard to understand. what I'm saying. So in Germany f uh in German for example, it's that we put s a lot of words just together, like one after the other, without spaces, and they create new words. Um now English does the same thing, they just leave the spaces in and so it's easier to read. But in German, you know, it's just uh the the customary thing to like write things um as one word. So that's a thing that makes stuff complicated and if you look into like specific easy to read language in German. We have actually a catalogue with um requirements that say like oh instead of like putting the words like in one single Send like in one single word, you actually put like little mid-dots in between so that it's easier to spot where one word uh concludes and another word starts Because only that way someone with a cognitive disability who is new to the the language uh you know uh has a much easier time to see like oh where are the word boundaries and that make it easier to understand. Also in some instances, uh and of course I don't have a good example um off the top of my head. uh you get into these um uh words where like uh you could make the word boundary on two different places and they have different meanings so you want to avoid that right So um so there is like a specific like easy read German vocabulary basically that you that you can use or like sentence structure. So that's Super interesting. Uh not really the the topic that we're talking about, but like I think it's really, really important to say like this is like more an idea for like how to think about writing and about language in this case, uh than like, oh do this and that, right? Because like Language also has so much nuance and you don't want to like just paint it with like one big like brush that you don't, you know, that that that applies to everything. Some sometimes you want to be more ornate or sometimes you want to be more straightforward. If it's only about facts, there's a different different requirement than it's about pros or like, you know, if it's a like poetry or something like that. So different things. Annika, go ahead.

I was wondering about this German Easy language. You you Can you show how you write this little dot you're talking about? Oh yeah, I can I can uh show In Sweden we have a um it's a deadly sin, not to uh l it's a deadly sin to separate words. We call it sash, good evening. It's a distinctive writing with these spaces. That's a deadly sin.

Yeah. And so this is the sign for easy read. I think it's very ugly, but you know, don't don't quote me on that, please. But basically uh why don't I have a good example? I really should have an example uh of it. Um usually well I could go like Let's go to the federal So there's the easy read button in the top right and you see the official logos. It looks different because like Why not? So you have here like it says um easy to read and then um Uh can I click on this? So you use a lot of bullet points, of course. And they also like every sentence is on one line, which like it feels really hard to read for me. But I think if you like need the support, like you know, just going line by line makes a lot of sense. Um let me see. So they don't actually do the mid-dot, they do the the dash in between. So Bundesregierung would be one word. with a lowercase r and they put the dash in in between. So that that is one example. But yeah, basically you can use the mid dot.

Which is uh maybe I heard you wrong about it.

There we go. Oh it why is why is my thing in in German? This is not good There we go. So you can have like this mid-dot and then you can put that into uh the language. So here we have uh So uh this word uh Bundesregierung, so the administration, and instead of the Dash you could go in here. And I think that's usually what is done, so I don't know why they do have And you have it either like this with the the dot being like in there or don't do this.

How is a screen reader pronounced that the dot?

Uh the dot in this case would be uh would be pronounced as like Mittelpunkt or something like that. So it would be like very verbose. But this is basically another la Germany treats it as like a separate language. So it would have your normal language for everyone and then you have the easy read. language and you can of course like in your settings as a screen reader user you can set that yeah you know to be pronounced or not. And I guess most most screen readers probably will like uh will do it um will not pronounce it like in a long way so you can also have like this where you basically like put the two nouns and you only put the mid-dot in the middle and then you have like a small lowercase r so that would be would be a way to do it and they decided um to to do an uppercase R and do a a dash, which like I think is more closer to like standard German. Um but you can see how like every everything like very small sentences, very uh uh and and everything on one uh on one line. That's the idea there.

Okay. Thank you. Interesting.

It's it's super interesting. Like as someone who like you know and my my general approach is not to have like two separate Types of content because I think that makes it like much harder to like uh to keep up to date, you know, you get like if you if you always have to like fix it on two places, then you need like sometimes special translators for these. Um uh easy to read language things. Um so I'm not the biggest fan of that, but for central like uh pages like, oh this is you know the administration of Germany has to say something, you know, it may make sense that they have like more specialized things. Um there are variations of that. So um In addition to leichte Sprache, which is Easy Read German. You can also have like einfache Sprache, which is simple German. Um and that only takes like a subset of uh of the rules. And technically leichte Sprache also means they should have like little um graphics next to the text, which they just don't do. Um I don't know what's what's up with that. Uh but yeah that's that's the idea. So you have also something visual to look at. Um debatable I think if if those those little comics are useful all the time but like that's that's the idea you know giving m multiple more ways to like to read the language. So it's uh I I think it's a a good thing and a nice exercise and uh and the degree of like how simple you want to go or how you know That depends on your audience and like you know what your website is about. If it's about like writing HTML in a like complicated way or being a programmer, you might use like more difficult language than if it's like um oh this is how you pay your bill for your I don't know or energy company or something like that, right? Different audiences, different like complexities in what you are explaining. So yeah, but it's it's super fun. So but for English, what makes some writing more complicated than others? Um and this is a good thing to ask yourself. Like how do I know that the writing is complicated? And usually if you haven't thought about it, it is. So that's that's the easy way to test it. Um but for English especially it comes down to sentence length and syllables. So if you have a long sentence or if words have long or have multiple syllables, then it's difficult more difficult to read. And that has to do with like English being such a short language, like compared to Swedish or German or like a lot of like other languages, it it has very short words and like very short sentences usually too. um, you know, something you can say in like three words in English, you sometimes need five in German or something like that. So and and not being used to like longer sentences makes it harder to read. That's just how How that stuff goes. Um uh yeah, terrible sentence from W3C's accessibility guidelines. Uh 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 understand what that sentence wants to tell me. Um but yeah, that's like it's easy to have like long sentences and not like, you know, uh really have a good g have have have said a lot but not, you know, uh conveyed a lot of information. Um it's a good reminder, the more complex the material, the shorter the sentences should be. So if you explain something that's like multiple steps or like very complicated um uh thing then if you have more more shorter sentences it's easier to say oh I'm in this step or I'm at this place. Uh experts recommend keeping sentences to between 20 and 25 words. I think that's a good number to like learn and forget. Like short, short is good. Um but you also want variety. That's the other thing. Like if your text is all the same, it gets boring and then that makes it hard to read. So you want to like have short sentences. But then you also want to have longer sentences to make a point or to be like more precise. So some 35 word sentences and some three-word sentences is what Ashley says. Um just an average of twenty words. So yeah, that's that's a good thing. And of course like that does not like apply to something like German because we just take seventeen words and put them together and say we only have one word. Um don't don't do that. So Ashley has rewritten the um the paragraph that I tried to read before and put it into two uh sentences, uh which too is better than th than one long one, and that's 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 document. So You know, you you just go out of your way to say like, oh, this this sentence ends now, and then there's a new sentence, uh, and you can say the same thing, and it's much clearer. Uh but that's only half of the thing. The other thing is syllables. Um and you can think of this as like Tetris. Um so If you have uh short syllable words, like one syllable words, two syllable words, um also syllable is a very hard word to say. uh then you can fit m more in and they're closer together and it makes uh it's it's easier. And then you have the long um syllables, syllable words. where like they are harder to fit into sentences or they're harder to to to like make work. Syllables are the building blocks of words Um and you and and she makes and this is why why I like this presentation so much and I basically like you know translate it for like this course. Um One-syllable words have only two blocks in Tetris. This would be the easiest Tetris of all time. Words like so, you, stuff like that. Then you can think of two-syllable words such as update, like three-block Tetris pieces. And by the way, I'm terrible at like identifying syllables and words like because we d we don't do that in like we do it in Germany or in German but like I don't think it has like as much of a weight so it's it's really interesting. But like you have longer words that that consists of two syllables, so those are three block Tetris pieces. And then With three syllable words and more, you have five block Tetris pieces and seven block Tetris pieces for four-syllable words. So like make it even more complicated And then five syllable words, it's just like yeah, rings and like not not good. And sometimes you just have to say like, oh, long words are unavoidable. And this, you know, applies, I think, for German as well, and I guess for Swedish too. It's like sometimes this is the right word to use in this context. So even though it's a difficult to read word, you can't just sidestep it. And you know, if you have a few in your Tetris uh game, then that's okay. But if it's only those long words, then it's going to be difficult. And then there are a couple of these common corporate speak words and plain sub substitutions. And I think this is like super interesting for uh for people uh where English is the second language because it's so easy to pick up all those corporate speak words. Because that's what we hear all day, right? Because it's usually our profession or like, you know, um so so people have those long words. And so just this list and it comes from bit. ly slash plain words. I have opened the the page here in the background. Yeah, and they have uh restructured everything, so I don't know if if the like word list is in there still, so we have to explore that. Um But yeah, here are some of the highlights. Prior to, so if you say like, you know, send in the exam prior to March 1st, uh, just before. Prior to are two syllables, before is also two syllables, I think. No, three syllables to two syllables. I'm bad at counting syllables. So just you know, quad error demonstrantum. Prior to I guess those are three syllables. I don't know. Um I proofread the report prior to the meeting. I proofread the report before the meeting. Just easier to read immediately. Commands co com commands uh start from two to one We will commence user interviews on Tuesday. We will start user interviews on Tuesday. Sufficient Enough. I like to use sufficient. I'm guilty as charged. Uh because I think it it just feels more official. So um but yeah, you go from three syllables to two, so that's a win. We don't have sufficient staff to run the beta test. We don't have enough staff to run the beta test. I think in this case I would also use enough, I hope. In order to, that's like one of my favorites. A lot of people say, and I see that in written language all over, like especially from like English as a second language people who who go out of their way to say like, oh, in order to do this or um We have done this and that in order to achieve that. Um just using two is usually good enough. So you go from four syllables to one. Um Which is awesome. Use the drop-down in order to select a flight. Use the drop-down to select a flight. uh accordingly or consequently to sow. So you can go from four syllables to one. We've lost power, consequently our side is down. We lost power, we lost power, so our side is down. So really trying to like get rid of those like long complicated words. The following, I'm also guilty of that. Like read the following thing and stuff like that. And you can just use the this in most cases. And you and again, like this is all about variation as well. I think there is a slide uh in in a couple of slides. So If you use like the following ones in your text, that's totally fine. But if you have it like three times, it gets like big and like you know a little bit annoying to use However and but so this is one where a lot of like English teachers will tell you you shouldn't use but at the beginning of a sentence. And Ashley says like That's not good. That's not good advice. That works in Firefox, however, it doesn't work in IE. That works in Firefox, but it doesn't work in IE. Just use button there. Uh and then there's like another trick that makes more of a difference than any of these like word sub substitutions. And that's contractions. So this is this is something that I sometimes struggle with too. And that's just going from do not to don't. Um cannot, can't. Uh and you know just um avoiding these like long like little bit roboty sentences. or like co combined words. So um yeah it's a good good thing to to know. And uh Uh this is like a little bit of like uh research into like the prevalence or like how often uh the the contractions I use because back in the day, like when I started learning English, it was like yeah informal like informally you can use don't and and stuff. But if you write like something down you shouldn't use it. Um I think that was very like outdated back then. But like uh even now you have um uh people are saying that. And now th these days like don't is used seven point seven times more than do not. Can't is used two point nine times more than uh more often than cannot. Doesn't 2. 8 times more than the uncontracted version version, didn't is use almost three times more, won't is use two point five times more. So Nowadays the tide has turned. Very dramatic. It's totally okay in writing and in like, you know, normal company like messaging to use contractions. Um, it's commonplace. Uh yeah, and like we know for a long time that it improves readability. Style guides are also on the train, which is like, yeah, so you don't want to robot yourself. Um Invariably movie robots end up saying stuff like this, I will be glad to see them if they do not get mad, uh instead of like I'll be glad to see them if they don't get mad. But that's I think yeah we all have seen like robots in TV shows and movies that like cannot cannot fathom that you can contract these words which like Living in the space year of 2026, it's also a fun thing to think like that would be an obstacle for robots. I don't know. But yeah, it's an easy way to convey like, oh, this is a robot. And it works So yeah, do you want to sound like auto an automaton or like a person? Um and then there are a couple of ways you can check that for yourself So there are a couple and the links will as always be in uh in Canvas. Um there's this readability uh analyzer Uh and you can just put the uh content into the text box and it will calculate read readability numbers. Um You should aim to a flash Kinkade reading grade that's less than 9. I skip over this like really quick because like almost nothing of like how this is calculated applies to languages other than English. If you want to like, you know, you have different scales on how it's graded because like different languages have different length of words and stuff like that. So skipping through that. Yeah, remember that uh most people can only comfortably read writing that is four to five years below their maximum education level. Um This applies mostly to America, I guess. Um but yeah, it's like it's like to comfortably read, like you you get into into a spot where like most people are have like um lower reading levels than you would anticipate. Like that you are writing that content already puts you probably above like most people who are reading it, right? terms of comprehension and stuff like that. So uh keeping that in mind I think is a is a really important thing. So yeah, W3C does not not do the best, but that's not uh not surprising. So emergency weather alerts um uh really interesting things, so uh So uh the National Weather Service, like when that existed in the US of course, uh they had like these really long um uh statements on how weather and how everything works and like um you get that feeling like oh this is a lot more words than you would need It has one of those ratings of 13. 4. You're aiming for like what did I say six? Um so if you change it Which actually does in this uh here. Uh it gets down to a uh reading level of 7. 6, which is much much better and much easier to read. Don't ever worry about the reading grade level being too low. Nobody has ever complained about something being too easy to read. Yeah, and then recap, aim for an average sentence length of 20-ish words. Keep an eye out for any long words that you can like where you can use like simpler words uh use contractions early and often. I'm really sad that we don't have that in German. Like I would I would be super happy to like smoosh more words together and make some them shorter. But We're all in long words. We're not dabbling in this short word stuff. And then double check by using something like the readability analyzer. Yeah, and I can open that real quick. So this is the readability analyzer. It's a super ugly page. But you could use like this paragraph about like plain language from the plain language digital golf and put that in and have that analyzed And it says it's four sentences, 15. 25 words per sentence, which is pretty good. Characters per word, difficulty words, 16%, and then you see the Where's the reading level? Flash King grade level 8. 54. So even though this is like an intro sentence and relatively short um still goes into like the 8. 5s. And yeah, and you can see that like they have like flesh eating rees as a score, gunning fox scale level, whatever that is. Um, so you get all these different scores and like yeah, I don't and they're not like super applicable to any uh other languages. Anika, go ahead.

Uh is it only for English? Or can you choose languages on this site, this analysis side? This is just for English. English, yeah.

Yeah, and most of the readability analyzer style sites are in English. I have one that is uh in Swedish, but I don't know how good it is. So you know that's just the the thing how this works. So there's the um plain language uh guide Here there's used to be like a like bigger um resource, but there's still like good stuff in there like principles and writing for understanding. I don't know if they still have the word list though. That used to be a good good way I should uh search for the um uh archive. org version of it. Um but yeah, there so a little bit of plain language uh guidance from the US government. Um and then there's a lot of like stuff f in Swedish too, which um, you know, as I said, I don't don't all understand. Uh, but there are these uh rules here that you can you can look into and there is actually a long um uh PDF is it is it long? Uh well it's a medium long uh PDF of like words and phrases you should avoid, right? So uh it's a good Um I hope it's a good resource. I've been told it's a good resource.

Um It's the government side, so it should be good.

Yeah, yeah. Can can we trust uh government? Oh too political, too political. Um but but yeah, I th I think this is the this is good for uh like um for really diving in and like saying, oh, there are things that um that we shouldn't use in this in in these instances and making it easier to read. Um I also have uh gotten a recommendation for this book and for this book uh and you can use those to like uh to get a better feeling uh of like you know what is uh what is a good way to do that um and there is a tool which is like the uh readability uh tool for swedish here um Let's use this and then you can analyze that and you get uh uh a readability index of forty three which they say is pretty good like medium but um in the in in the low This is me reading Swedish and being like almost confident that I know what's going on. Um But uh but yeah, I th I think this is a good way to like you know go through and have the the information there. And you can I think add websites in there or documents too. So we could go and do accesslab. com slash s Is that what we're doing? Oh, this makes it a nice uh PHP failure. So maybe maybe not like that. So maybe just paste in the text. Um yeah, uh and there are a couple of other tools that I use. uh that I have used so this Hemingway app. Oh this is now all AI I see what's going on. So this used to be like AI free but it's not a uh uh in in this case, but it basically gives you um uh highlights for difficult to read sentences. Uh so yeah if you use the classic desktop app it promotes no AI here at the top. This is this is super fun. I need to make a screenshot about that. Um for future future use. Uh basically question again.

Well uh do you have uh some kind of test To see if you if there is AI to the site or does it say I say I don't know wh why you can say it's not AI

Oh, it says here, no AI at the top.

Oh uh the opposite I mean. You said oh it says here AI tools.

Oh there, okay.

Oh no, that's fun, yeah.

Yeah, no, so they have like hey, try our AI tools, and then they go like, oh here's the classic editor where you don't need to to use AI, which is like I've uh it's a it's interesting times, I guess. Um So no, that's that's how I figure it out. Um yeah, so Hemingway is nice for for English um because you get this readability grade here you get some statistics which I don't care for a lot uh but it also highlights while you type or when you paste it in um highlights one sentence is very hard to read um and they have this like one sentence And you can say if you see a red highlight, your sentence is so dense and complicated that your readers We get lost trying to follow its meandering convoluted logic. Try editing this sentence to remove the red highlight. So we can just do uh Try this first. So we remove the red highlight on the on the rest. And then we let's get red rid of convoluted and then it's only a medium hard to read sentence. Right? So that's how you would edit this into like uh into shape. Um Yeah, and then like you can uh you also have things like weakness in here, so uh when you use passive voice, then this is what they um uh w what what they do and of course you can all fix everything with ai um so in this case you say like adverbs passive voice and other weakening phrases are marked in blue Um we mark adverbs, passive voice, and other weakening phrases in blue would make it active. And yeah, so you can you can fix your language there too. Um and then, you know, things like you utilize, you can just replaced with use uh and that makes it easier to read. So those there you go from like multiple syllables to one. Um and uh and then you you have you have that. And there are many, many tools like this. So don't like, you know, if you don't find one that works for you, you can search for another one. What I personally use is this language tool checker. Um and uh like I pay for it, they can't pay me for uh for for saying that I that I like to use it. Um And they basically also grammar check and can help you paraphrase like long sentences and stuff like that. So if you have a long sentence, let's go to the um to the example that Ashley had. Go back, back, back, back to sorry for the flashing. There we go. So we can copy that. Oh yeah, and we can put that into Hemingway too, so you can see. that will put that in red immediately. And here it's basically the same thing. So it goes through and scans it and says like there are no like actual grammar errors. But then you can go on paraphrase and click it and it will sim simplify it. It can even like remove stuff. I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. Like that's too simple. Um I wish it would um it would uh give give me the option to like split it up because usually it does that when you have really long sentences but maybe my sentences are actually longer than this So um don't have it here. But here we have things like um statistics, which is a pretty like not difficult word, but like you could say um results instead. You know, and finished checking. Uh processing that that feels longer, so checking is is probably pretty good. But you can basically get like um like synonyms automatically when you when you click on words. I I sometimes use that when I go through my my writing and say like oh I've used the same word like seven times in a row please give me some more options there So yeah, uh language tool I think it's pretty good to use. And the good thing about language tool is that it's available in all these. I don't know if that comes across on the screen. Yeah, it does. In all these different languages. So you can go English, you can go Catalan, but you can of course also go Uh not not on the screen, but uh Swedish is uh on the bottom. Um Tamil, Ukrainian, so you have a lot of like much more variants than in your uh uh in your Hemingway app or or somewhere else. So that's why that's my the primary reason I use that because I can use it for, you know, English and German writing for example. Oh yeah and you can switch on Piki mode. And then it's like still not picky enough for this sentence. Oh, which is a shame. Um yeah. Any other questions about like content or anything, really? Doesn't look like it. This is usually a quick one, which wasn't while it's double doubly like annoying that I had to push it back. Because you could all be like already like scattered through the winds. Um yeah, if there are no questions, uh I will say let's um Let's call it a day. Feel free to ask questions in Slack. I will put the recording online as always. And yeah. Have a good rest of your day and take care. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Sakara. Bye