Live Session (2026)

Welcome back to this week's lecture about all things content really an an important topic of like how to structure it and how to to word it and like how to make sure that everything like works together well and that your content is accessible for everybody. Um and as always I'd like to start by asking did you have any questions? Are there anything is there anything I should be m explaining more in detail? Um yeah, or is is there anything that was like, you know, unclear, anything like that? Doesn't look like it. All right. Yeah, I want to show you a little presentation oh there is actually a hand go ahead somas

Sorry, trying to get set up here. Oh good. Um I was grabbing some coffee before. okay, so I actually had three questions written down. one is connected to buttons. I'm not super clear. on what the correct copy should be. Like for example, submit. Should it be submit what? Should it be ver verb plus what it is? Um or send. Send what? Like is it enough to say send because it's on a table or a page where the context is clear enough? Or

Good question. I think in practice you can only determine that for yourself. Like there is no universal answer for like Doing this. Like, for example, if you have a search field and says search, it's like do the search, right? Do do it for me. And the same goes for like if you have like a pretty standard form you would say submit, you know, submit this form. I I always think submit sounds a little bit too technical, right? So you want to say like send or save or something like that Um you but in in the end this is like where your personal style guide also comes in. Like if all of your other buttons like in the f in in the flow or in other screens are more like actiony or like more I don't know use use different wording then you're you're totally fine to use like the wording that you think is is you know most appropriate for the use case.

So there is no like thumbnail, not thumbnail, thumb rule, like a best practice of not relying just on the verb, but also what the verb is referring to

Yeah, I mean the the biggest rule is like to keep it short and like to the point, especially for people using screen readers, that's useful. Um But on the other hand, you like you also want to be it as expressive as possible, right? So if especially if you have multiple buttons, you might have something like you know edit next to a video so you might want to say like edit video and be like really clear what's going to happen like or open video detail page Like that would already be very wordy, right? So you might want to use a link instead to just signal that like this goes somewhere. Um yeah, but there's no like No hard like rules in in general, like you know, tr try to be specific. Um I think I s I see a lot of instances where I'm like Yeah, this is a very general description so far. And and also like Take the time to like double check your your button names. So for example, I just had a client that had like this a little like text field and then basically like tags, you wrote the the text and then you pressed enter and then the tag was there and next to it was like a little X that you could click to remove that tag. pretty like standard interface, like terrible to make accessible, but like sta standard thing that we see almost everywhere these days. Um and the Button said delete. And I was like, that's not really what's happening. It's removing the tag. So you should say remove and then the the word that you typed in. Um because then from the context and from the button it's much more clear than just say like delete or like, you know anything else. So it's it it makes sense to like take a step back and think about like, oh what's going on here? What does this button or or what is the result? And so, you know, get getting to the button name.

Okay, thank you. And then my next is there anyone else raising their hands?

Nope, go ahead.

Okay. My second question was, so we had an example in the W3C using link text to describe target page And then there was a do and do not comparison. And one was saying where where the the do not basically the X version was for more information on device independence, click here. and the other one was read more about and then about is the link about device independence. Um but It was slightly confusing to me because we were also saying that if a link is in the context of a text, then it was okay that it was a link.

Right.

Am I explain explaining myself clear enough?

Yeah, I I think so. I think I understand what what what you mean. So The the guidance is to make basically t links as much self-sufficient as possible. That's and that's the best practice like for WCAC to meet the success criterion. It needs only to be like understandable in the list item or in the paragraph or in the heading or whatever you have like with the surrounding context. This is good for a lot in a lot of instances, but it can be problematic if someone takes that link out of context Um when would that happen? Sometimes screen reader users are going on a page and just have a list of l like just request the screen reader to display a list of links Um so they can basically more quickly navigate through the different options that they have. And in this use case, then it is like because you don't have the you don't know where that link goes to. It can be a little bit more better to have you have to have better link texts. Um but yeah it's a It's a it's more of a best practice than like a hard requirement in that case.

Hmm. But we're also saying that if the link is in the context of a text and it's not alone, stand alone. That is okay. But in the example, that's exactly what it does. It's in the context of other body text. But then it's not okay. That's the part I'm not

Yeah, I know I'm just searching for the oh making text meaningful. So yeah, and this is like This is let me share the screen so you can see it too. So I think this is the example you're talking about. Um

So yeah. No, it's the one called using link text to describe target page is is where this example can be found. Using link text. I don't even see it there. But okay, let me tell you which one it is. It's let's see

Is that in the understanding?

Well what where what was it connected to using could it have been Um okay maybe you had the right one up, but the the text above the example was Yeah.

Yeah, using link text to describe the target page. Yeah. Um so these are not requirements. These are examples of best practices. So So this is related to link purpose, but mostly to link purpose, link only. Um so This is not a requirement. So that's why it says no information if it's out of out of context, and this has meaningful information in the link. It doesn't say you have to do this, it just says like this is a better way to do it than the the the click here on the left side Um yeah, in general, like yeah, if you have a list of links, , you know, and if you're a screen reader, you use it. It says click here, click here, click here difficult to much more difficult to use.

Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean those clear examples are always of course make sense. It's when it's Borderline tricky interpretation, you know, is required to know what to do. That's what Yeah.

Yeah, and and that's one of the reasons why WCAG is relatively lenient with this, like you know, in context, you can basically write anything that you want into your link. Um as long as like the purpose is clear with the context. Um and and that's exactly why because we have these like border cases where it just makes sense to say like oh look at this document you know to to know more or like you say like to full to fill out your application download these three pdfs and you would link you know these and three and pdfs It would be okay for from a WCAG standpoint to do that. Um and I think also in the as a screen reader user we would probably say like yeah let's explore what the context is there but but in general you should avoid it, right? So it's it's always a little bit difficult with the best practices around that.

That makes sense. I think my final maybe stupid question and there are a few videos from previous sessions that I haven't watched, so I hope I'm not asking something that already has been explained, but It's not super clear to me how, you know, using tab functionality, I understand, jumps between clickable elements But then the screen reader reads out everything. So the i interaction between these two, I'm not understanding like how that works. So does it if I use Do I use keyboard and screen reader at the same time? And how does it work? Like does it continue reading until I click next or like how How do they coexist?

It's a great question. Um and yeah, and and sorry for not explaining that better, , because I think This is actually something that we don't explain as well as we should. So there are basically two ways to interact with content. There's the tab navigation, which is you know what we usually say when we say keyboard navigation. It's using the tab key going from interactive element. to interactive element. Screen readers are a completely different program. They have little to do with this Um so with a screen reader you can use the tap key to go through the interactive elements, but that's not how most screen reader users are interacting with. the web at all. For example, when you're using voiceover on macOS you will use the arrow keys to navigate through the content mostly because you don't want to, you know, because you want text to be read for you. But as if someone has like a motor disability and just wants and can see the screen and just wants to interact with the active elements. They don't need to tap through every sentence and every paragraph, right? So you have these two different modes. They are basically different different modes. So everything that is applicable for keyboard navigation does not really mean to be applicable to screen reader navigation. Screen readers can do incredible things like you know reading things and like telling you about the the structure of the page and stuff like that. And I I will just show an example because I think it's easier to to think about when you see the example as well. We just pull that up so you don't so we don't speak like in abstracts. Because that easily happens. Um in these D There we go. Now I gotta share Let's screen and share my sound. Oh, I should do it differently so you can see the output by the screen reader as well. Give me a second So there we go. Oh, you don't need to see my backups. They are just for for me. so Make this a little bit smaller. So this is this is basically now Safari because like Voiceover works best with Safari, so that's that's what I use. Um but it also works with other browsers. It's just like you might get different results. and so keep that in mind. Like most screen readers are at least related to different browsers for their web functionality. But screen readers do so much more, right? They also interact with all the rest of the operating system. Like voiceover can also, you know, look at my calendar and and describe that to me and do do other stuff. So just keeping that in mind. So if I switch voice over on.

Voice a bullet link. Write meaningful text alternatives for images. This page introduces some basic cons list five items. Writing for web accessibility.

Shut up. Um so this is the one of the things that you need to learn like the left control key that will usually make any screen reader shut up automatically. So that that should work. And now if we are going through the top like it read the title of the web page, that's why web page titles are important. And now I can use the tab key to go through the individual elements.

Blink, change text size or colors, list five items.

So it says list five items because I've just Came into the list. I actually came into the list with the skip content. I don't know why it skipped that. So that was fun. Then we have this page in English.

Link. Fonse, list four items, level two, link, Bahasa Indonesia, Link, Yihongo Link all translations list five items. Hide options expanded button.

So that works for just interacting with things. But of course you don't know what else is there. For example, it said this page in English. It completely skipped, right? Because that's just text and not not a link.

Hide options, expanded button.

So I'm going back

Link, link, link, link, link. Change text size or colors. List five items.

Yeah, yeah. And now I'm using voiceover and arrow keys. So voiceover are control and option. Um and Every screen reader has their own like way to interact. and there are good cheat sheets that I can link that give you like, you know, if you're on Windows and you use NVDA or if you're using JAWS You know, you have different different c combinations or no combinations at all. For example, I said so usually use voiceover and the arrow keys to navigate. So that would be control option and then the arrow. So like this.

This page in three list four items leveled English one of four

So you get the information like that. you can also enable QuickNav in in macOS and that means that so that voiceover now just uses the arrow keys so you can just press the arrow key directly.

Bahassa Indonesia 3 of 4.

So those are left and right keys, but now if I want to go through like to the next container, I can use the up and down key. I hope this works. No, doesn't like it.

but if I do voice over down, it also end of list link so the high dot end of list end of skip link and language select skip to content link this page link end link high end of list end of scanner.

Well there we go.

So then we say we're in the banner landmark and then Visited Link Image W3C homepage. Visited link image web accessibility initiative Y homepage Strategies, standards, resources to make the web accessible to people with dis So that's how you interact with

individual like things and then you can use other functionalities so this was now really straightforward in nvida and jaws you can press the h key to to skip to the next heading Um there is a voiceover combination that I cannot remember because voiceover uses a lot of keys. That's just how how it works, but I can use a voiceover and u for the rotor, which is basically there quick navigation menu to skip to parts of the page. So if I press voice over key so control option and you links menu I get involved visited I get a huge list of links. And I I know you can only see part of it, but that's okay. And then I can basically say if I want to go to like let's say tips for designing really quickly.

A clan design test and teach at step design tips for design tips for tips for designing.

And then I'm here and then I press return. It puts me on that link. It doesn't activate it by default because you know maybe I just want to start from there. I know that it's somewhere on the page. But then I can press return. Page menu open. Reader available. that that page and that's how quickly I can navigate.

But if I press links menu the rotor again on item skip to content Then I can use the left and right keys to go through an item one designing for web accessibility

through different parts. And here it says like one designing for web accessibility to summary, which is like this next heading. I'm pointing at my screen as if you could see that. So here it says summary. So that's the heading level two.

2. Chart column button gear shape button question marks visited link.

That was something else.

Um then 2 provide sufficient contrast between foreground and background.

So this is now out of off-screen because we're you know blind, we don't need this to follow. 2.

Don't use color alone to con 2. Ensure that interactive elements are easy to identify

And if I say, oh, this is the heading I want to navigate to, I press enter.

Heading level two. Ensure that interactive elements are easy to identify.

And then I'm there again. And as you can hear, when it is in the list view, when it knows like, oh, I'm now sorting by headings. It doesn't say heading level two before each item, it just says two double double point colon, I thank you. other cultured people would say. Um two column, three column, like four for the headings in there. So you know, this is also like where in context the screen reader gives you different information than what you would like have in other contexts. Um there are a couple of other things in the in the rows.

Raised hand salma shabazizits.

Item 2 hand clues provide clear and consistent navigate plus tilde to open pop

up form controls menu so you can also go to form controls landmarks menu and you can go on item complementary

Compcomp comp comp main like the mainland secondary navigation breadcrumb navigation main navigation

And so on and so forth. So you know you have the the way to interact with all these items pretty fluently if you if you're using a screen reader

Windows Spots menu.

Windows Spots is just to get back to the toolbar. Stuff like that. Links menu. And then you put it on.

An item link is styled to stand out from main tag. No items in. Links menu.

Voice over off.

No items in links menu. Heading level two and voice over off. Ah, better.

yeah. Go ahead.

Yeah, I don't know if it's just me, but I find it very confusing and I have too many gaps, I feel like in in understanding like how this works. Is it like sometimes it feels like it's simply reading off the text on the page and sometimes it's adding some information. before and sometimes not. So if I were to start using it this and you know I wouldn't know If I should expect the system to read up what it's about to say and prepare me for what's coming or if it's just gonna jump into the text. I don't know as a designer if there's something I should Like, I don't know, is it is it is is it only reading what's on the page or does it have to do with how the developers have coded things?

Yeah, it has to do I mean we we did talk about page structure and and content structure before, right? Yeah. So you have certain headings and like navigation areas and stuff like that. And this is the information that the screen reader gives you like if you are navigating through the navigation it says like oh this is sub secondary navigation and you're on the left then that's information that the page has added to it. It says there's navigation, the name is secondary. If we go to a link, that is coded as a link, so it says link beforehand. So that's what you would expect. If there's no other information there, then it will just read the text that is in there. It's coded as a heading. as a designer you just want to like keep your visuals consistent and then the rest should theoretically be done by developers who know what they're doing, right? So you don't need to think about like what the output is because the output is also different from screen reader to screen reader.

Yeah, that's what makes it a bit challenging. So for example, when you were up in the left hand corner with the logo and then the web accessibility, it was saying something right in front like before it said

What's it link visited, yeah.

Did it say link? I feel like it said something else.

If it said link, then then it should say link visited image, something like that.

I can just switch it on again.

Right.

Okay. Okay Well that makes sense. I'm just voiceover off. Oh. Yeah, no, I'm I'm just like it our Content List Right.

Link. Permission to use Y materi link link bottom. Permission to use Y material. Oh not to be at the bottom. Link skip link link l hot visited link image W3C homepage banner it says visited link image because that's that's what it is like

So inside of the link is an image, which title or which alternative text is W3C homepage And then it says it's visited link and the image and then W3C homepage and then banner because we are now in the banner area, which is the header element or header of the page. So this is all stuff that is in the Well, that's basically in the code as additional information. Um and yeah, and if if I I'm reaching now into the future and I tell you a little bit about like So what we have here is basically we have name roles and values. So the W3C homepage is the name of this link. It's also the name of the image Um then it says what it is that you're interacting with. So that's the role. So it says it's an image and it's a link. And then it tells you what the status is of that in this case the link. But if it was a checkbox it would say checked. If it was like a radio button it would say checked. Stuff like that. You know, expanded, collapsed, the whole shebang. Th those are states. And so you have name roles values, values are states and properties and stuff like that. Um we're going to get into these like in detail in the ARIA stuff that comes in a few weeks. But basically all that information can then be used by the screen reader, but does not but there's no must there, right? The screen reader and the user, they determine if they want to use this information and how they want to use it. And then it says banner because we started in this in this area. And that's in this case also a role. So yeah, it's just information that is in the HTML text or in the HTML quer source code and then it's transformed into something that the screen reader can read. Um and yeah, and as I said, like this is all super configurable. Voice over off. Thank you. Yeah, no, it's all good questions and there are no, you know, dumb questions. It's all like I I always think we haven't explained it. Well enough if people have questions, right?

I think m my personal challenge is our developers don't know anything about accessibility and I'm trying to bring the awareness to our company. So therefore I ask questions that I shouldn't have to know, but I'm trying to like nudge them. So that's the context. Thank you.

Yeah, no, that that makes sense. And and we see that a lot with like, you know, and and yeah there are ways for like designers to like annotate designs to say like, oh, this is the banner area and this is the heading level one and this is a heading level two. I think developers should know most of these, like if you are consistent in your design, right? Um but there are whole like if you go in Figma in into the thing, there are whole annotation kits and stuff like that. I think this is like if designers learn all that, they can just be developers. You know, and developers and designers. So I think it's not not the most useful thing to do. Like it it shouldn't be like most thing. Of course sometimes you sh you want to say like, oh, this works like a combo box or this is a dialogue or something like that. I think that can be good context, you know, for like hints on how you want because you're not only designing the flat u UI or the picture of how it looks, but you're also designing the interaction. So if you think it's a combo box for someone using the mouse and the keyboard, then it also needs to be coded for accessibility with those properties. So I think those annotations can make sense But everything that's like, oh, but you have to put this ARIA attribute here or something like that. I've seen things where like designers were like, oh no, I now have to like basically be a better programmer than our programmers to do this. And I think that's just ridiculous. Um so yeah, I the I I understand that problem and yeah we have some clients where we don't do much more than like taking the stuff from the from the designers and basically translating it or annotating it for the developers because they don't have the understanding and that's how they learn about it. So yeah I see I see that that's certainly something that you that you know is is needed and and yeah people are struggling with it. Um I just wanted to show because I I said about like name role value. So basically if I go into voiceover utility, which is the settings page basically for voiceover and there's a lot like a lot a lot of settings that you can set right so this is highly customizable per client Um but for example if we look at headings which we just had like it says instead of name status type which would be like On the web we say name role value. In this case it's name status type. So the type is the role and the status is the the value, the state that it's in. For headings it puts the state first. So it will say heading level two or some yeah and then type. So level two heading, I think it should announce That that would make sense to me from the setting. And this is the default setting. So for other things like a link, it's status visited. Type link and then content and then the name. So you you have that here. That's why it's that visited link. You could set this to how do I edit this? Custom. You can say, oh, instead of visited link, I want it to say link visited. Then you can type like drag and drop it from one to the other. Now it says link visited and then it says the content. And even there I can say like contents told me that it's an image as the content Maybe I don't want this. Let's uncheck content. And now we have only type status name. And then if we go here and we switch voice over on again

Link image visited W3C Hide Options Expand Link Image Visited W3C Homepage Banner Okay it says link image visited homepage

So basically link image seems to be like the type in this case. Like it just takes it together as one thing, which is fine, but it changed the order of the of the visited and the link. So you yeah, you can be very Um very custom and and just make make this your voice over experience. If you need that. So there's a lot of stuff. Always important to put it back to default because otherwise you're confused when you show it off the next time. That's a pro tip. is is the requirements for the examination written anywhere. We can talk about examination at the end. Um I know don't think we we should do that right now in the middle, but yes it is. it should be in the charts. infrastructure but I don't actually know if we have published it. It should be published. I thought we had. Any other questions about this or other things.

I'm afraid to talk now. I've been talking for too long. when you do accessibility tests or what do you call it, reviews or checks? call it all all things. -huh okay. Um I assume you would do this as well, like test it with the voiceover, right? Or is it not a part of the accessibility check?

Awesome question. I just written an article about this. Um So on my on my website. And I titled it Screen Readers Are Not Testing Tools. So Yes, we use them for testing, but they're not testing tools. What do what do I mean with that is that it makes sense for us to like to validate accessibility with screen readers just to make sure that like the data that is actually on the site is properly translated to the screen reader what we do usually don't do is use it to like see, oh, does the this image have a proper alternative text? There are way easier methods to do that, right? So in general, I would say 90% at least for me, and I know other people are testing differently. That's also like just like there's a lot of diversity in this. But for me, like 90% is like looking at the code, testing with the keyboard, because if it's keyboard accessible, it's 99. 9% also screen reader accessible. you know then making sure that the and this is like where it gets technical right that the right roles are in there that the right n that that things are clearly named, that the statuses are set, stuff like that. Um and then at the end, you know, if there's something that is very cumbersome or something that is like, oh we we have like, you know, instead of using like a standard way to implement something, , I see that there's something that is like really like difficult or or like uncommon then I use a screen reader just to like see okay can I can I find my way around it and I'm a really bad screen reader user Like there are there are screen reader users out there that are much more competent than I am. So I figure if I can do it, it's probably okay. But I also see the page, so I have a preconcept preconceived notion about it, right? I know like, oh, I expect this and this to happen, so I will jiggle with the screen reader until it happens, which is not the best way to test. And you know, you can't expect screen reader user to to to like just you know wriggle around with stuff until it works. So in in the end like If you have something that is very complicated and you're not sure that it's accessible with a screen reader, which sometimes happens, you have to go to a screen reader user and say, like, hey. What do you think about this? And I will tell I won't tell you beforehand if it's good or not. just g you know, use it and and do this task and and tell me about it because otherwise yeah it's you have like a biased sample of of of that. But yeah, it's a it's like you you will use the screen reader when you do testing, but it's not like I think it should come at the relatively at the end instead of the start for Testing how we do it, how I do it, shouldn't generalize, is that I basically go through every WCAG success criterion and say, like, oh, does this meet this success criterion? And that You know, takes away, should theoretically take away a hundred percent of all screen reader issues because you know, if you know what you're doing, what you're looking at, what you have to expect. that's just like it's it's already covered, but like a lot of people struggling with like, okay, what's the best approach So testing and verifying with screen readers makes a lot of sense. Um in that in that case. All right.

Can I just squeeze in a final question?

Okay.

I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay, so once this course is over and we're all on our own And we can't come back to ask questions. Is there a forum, a place where you can go and be like, hey, I never thought about this. Now I'm here. How do I do this?

Well, you can of course hire us. So no, just kidding, just kidding. Um well not only kidding, but no no the The thing is that there are places so there is the Web Accessibility Slack. You can get invited into it's web-a11y. slack. com. Um you have to ask someone to invite you and that is already in that community and then they can and then you give them their your email address and then they can invite you. it's not a big deal if you want us to invite you to that. Feel free. I don't I think it's a good community. There's a lot happening there. Also think it's like A little bit like sometimes a little bit rough and tumble, how it can be with online communities, right? Um but I think if you if you ask good questions, people are really, really happy to help because like you know in in the end like you know we can't do everything ourselves even the people who are doing this for like 20 years like I do, we have realized a long time ago like educating and like making sure that people understand and like have good n good knowledge is very valuable. and I think that like the accessibility slack. There's also a an equivalent Swedish Slack. I think they are great great ways to start. If you have any specific questions Adrian Rosaldi's block. Adrian. Oh man, I cannot type Adrian. Scroll to the top. Adrian Roselli's blog at adrianroselli. com is awesome. He's a really good. person and like educator and like he has blog posts for everything so you will be very happy with like what you get here and he's he's super knowledgeable like so yeah I I think that's like So if if I am thinking like, oh, what do other specialists think about this, I go to Adrian and see if he has written something about it because he's he's he's awesome. and then there are a lot of like books and and other groups that that that you can join. So there's there's a lot of networking possibilities Awesome. Alright, I want to talk a little bit about language today, too. Um and I have this presentation by my by my good acquaintance Ashley Bischoff who does accessibility but also is a a writer and editor so she has a lot of knowledge about like how to you know write good language and especially In this case, this is for for English, like just some guidelines on how to to better write. and I'm gonna make this relatively quick. I think the the The presentation is linked from the from the links on the page with this video that you're just watching. If you are watching it after the fact, if you're not watching it after the fact, then it will be there when I post a video. Um and yeah, and basically what she's about is like making language as simple as possible. We have that drive, especially in English, and I think especially for us as like second language English speakers, which most of us are, I assume, here in this course. It's really easy course. it's really easy. I said that really funny. Um it's really easy to get into these like you know, you acquire phrases that are that sound complicated and like you know very Um and so you use things like utilize and stuff like that, which like the that don doesn't make a lot of sense, just use use. And yes, LLM language is like Perfect for this too. And and I have seen this. Like a lot of people have started like posting stuff that have this like cadence of three things Like, oh it's this and this and that and you go and and I have adopted that sometimes and I was like, oh it's not only this and that and I'll go like no I don't use AIs, I don't want to have anything to do with this. And now I'm adopting this this types of speech pattern really, really bad. So just trying to be to be much more simple. So Ashley goes in her talk she goes through like what makes writing complicated more complicated than others. So how do I know if I know if my writing is complicated? And I know it because I wrote it, so it must be complicated But she identifies sentence lengths and syllable lengths, like number of syllables. Those are like the big things in English. I think it's a little bit different in Swedish, it's a little bit different in German as well, because you know, we do like just these long words and then everyone is fine with them. Like syllables don't super come into play, which is funny. Um but but of course if you have long words they get much harder to read. So you know that's it it makes sense but I think it's not as like clear cut as it is in English So this is the example that she uses from W3C's accessibility guidelines. The 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. a great W three C web accessibility sentence like mm awesome And her general guidance is the com more complex the material, the shorter the sentences should be. Like if you have something that's very hard to explain. just try to explain it in very short sentences. I try to do that. And sometimes I'm more successful than in other times. Um but that's I I think that's good advice. and experts recommend keeping sentences to between 20 and 25 words. I think that's a good like number. And of course you don't want it to be like always the same number of words because that's getting boring. So variety is good. Some 35-word sentences and some three-word sentences, just an average. Right? So what you could do from the W3C sentence is just split it up into smaller sentences. 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. much more easy to understand. Sentence length is half the battle, cutting syllables is the other half, and I think that's really correct for for most languages, including English. So think of it as Tetris pieces, which like that totally appeals to me. I love Tetris, it was my first video game. Let's go for it. So you have building blocks for words. And one syllable words she says are like two block Tetris pieces. They basically fit everywhere, like so, , and and stuff like that. Fit everywhere, easy to easy to place Then two syllable words, you have three block Tetris pieces, update would be would be the example, and then three syllable words are five block Tetris pieces. So that's when you get like to the really complicated stuff. And then if you have four syllable words, it's seven blocks. And if it has five syllables, it's just like, yeah, you have a really bad time. But sometimes long words might be unavoidable, like accessibility. I have to say it all the time. It has a lot of syllables, it's terrible. So if you have some of these like more complicated things in your in in your sentence then it's probably okay. But if you have only long words then it's going to be difficult. Um and there are some common corporate speak words and plain text substitutions and like I like to go through them because I it's al always a good reminder to to like keep it more simple. There is under plain language golf, there's a list of simple words. This website has changed a lot. Um but there is still somewhere there's still a list, I think, for for words. So yeah, I don't know, but I think it it has changed a lot unfortunately Um so prior to this is something that people who like write emails always use like prior to instead of before. much easier word, you go from three syllables to two, , and it's it says the same thing. But it sounds more official if I use prior too, right? And this is something that we as like second language English speakers fall into like we want to sound official and like proper and like it's yeah don't don't like just say it like plainly. I proofread the report prior to the meeting. I proofread the report before the meeting. Much much easier. I think I would not use prior to in this case. Commands. Comments instead of start. You know. From two syllables to one, we will command commence user interviews on Tuesday, we will start user interviews on Tuesday. Sufficient. This is one I use all the time. Enough. Um, so probably I should say it's an enough enough technique in WCAC so that cuts down. Then in order two, that's like a very famous one, you can just contract that to two. Um and it's it's the same thing I use the drop-down in order to select a flight, use the drop-down to select a flight. Same thing. Accordingly, consequently, just so Awesome for syllables to one. The following also is one that I use quite often, this But this is also one where I'm like it can be easy like to get into having like this all over your texts in the end. Like It's so easy to just grab and go like this or that or there or something like that and then you you s you know, it's a lot of fluff, but you don't like specifically say what you say. So yeah, I think this is a good one. To think about. up supports these keywords shortcuts. However, but and this also goes for the start of sentences, like Ashley has no problem with like putting but in in in the front of sentences. I know that a lot of people think it's improper, but I don't I don't think We should think that because it makes stuff more easy to read. and then there are contractions, and I don't think I need to like spend too much time on those. It's do not and don't, cannot and can't. And basically those are also have used to be considered like, oh this is, you know non-standard English, but now that has completely changed. Um and the contractions are totally fine. So you might have learned in in school, right? Like I I learned that, but now I'm I'm very old, so you know, maybe maybe you learn better stuff these these days. But I learned at school like, oh, you don't want to use contractions because it is not like standard or it's not like good enough, but in reality, like especially with like I think Americanization of the language. Um It is used more often than the non-contracted version. yeah, and there are a lot of other stuff in here. I don't want to like to to go more into that, like for contractions especially, like If you don't use them, you sound like a robot. So that's also but that's also something that you can use to emphasize, like, you know, sometimes when I when I talk to clients I want to say like what we do not do, right? And I want to be very clear like that. We do not use just automated tools to test your side. So then I would use do not because that basically stops reading the sentence. So yeah, there's nuance in there. And then there's how to check your readability, and I will immediately jump over to a few tools. One is already in the chat, I've seen that Great. So there's the language tool grammar checker, which is something that I use, which is pretty nice. It's basically like Grammarly, but from Europe and it works in many many different languages so it works even if you s write English and Swedish or German mixed up. So this is This is my go-to tool. Now they're doing more AI stuff, so it got worse, unfortunately, like it was better before. But But yeah, there's that there's good stuff and for example if you have a long sentence or like a long paragraph it like will propose like to split it in piece it it will usually not change your voice or or like mangle it through like some AI like you know make it like look like more or something like that. It will just take what you have, tell you like, oh this is how you can improve your grammar or or voice. And then you can either take it or leave it. And I would say in sixty percent of times, you know, it's like a typo or something like that. And I take it and you know in the other 40% of times I go like, nah, this is my style. Go go away. And that's also fine. Um there is Hemingway app and editor where you can paste in your your text and it will show you like that your sentences are hard to read and and stuff like that. So here we have weakness, you know of those things. This got a huge AI update, upgrade. Um so I I have not used it since since it got that, but basically you can now fix the s fix the sentence with AI and then you know if you pay for it. But in the general sense, you know, you can still use like the non-AI stuff that is free and just paste in your text here Make your changes, , you know, like splitting up sentences and then, you know, go ahead your merry way. and it's a good way to like to to know if like your writing is good or bad or you want stats about it. Um and yeah it used to have the It used to show oh yeah here the readability grade. Um so here you have grade 8. You usually want to like Have grade six or something like that for most people to understand it. Um and yeah, and then there's Lyx, which is the Swedish variant of this. and it it doesn't have any AI. I automatedly translated it to the English. But yeah, you can you can use that and it should be should be really, really nice. Um Yeah, and I'm I'm not a big fan of like putting everything into LLMs and like trying to rewrite it and do the whole thing. I I think making it for for certain sentences, you know, and like macOS for for English has this now built in where you can basically say like Hey, make this more nice or make this more direct or something like that. I I'm always struggling with that. I think it doesn't doesn't really read like natural language anymore when you do that. Um but yeah, I think I think getting that feedback makes a lot of sense. Um Yeah, and then there are books that I have been recommended, and because I don't speak Swedish, I cannot, you know, I cannot speak for them, but A lot of people have recommended them over like a lot long time that I'm doing these, so I think they're good. Um so writing better at work. And I I will not try to to speak the Swedish name just for, you know, because that would be a human rights abuse, I guess. Um Then there's this write easy to read handbook, which I also got recommended. And then there's this blacklist. From the government which basically says like, oh, these are like bad words to use Which probably means I shouldn't put them on video. but there you go. so so that makes makes sense that you get like a little bit more b better language in there. do we have in the chat? Lickscale is very usable. Yep. Okay, academia and this is a ro real problem for written text, as well when the target group is the general public A really interesting phenomenon. Yeah, I think especially like relying on LLMs and text generation makes texts more hard to read. Um and you can like counteract that a little bit if you ask them to like bulletize items, like just make a list out of it. Um, you know, I think this is also like a very a a very legit way to use lms is to like transform text because they are text models. I think that it makes a lot of sense. Um And so going from one format into another, I think there there's some things there that that make sense. Um And so yeah, and and of course for for oneself, like you know, oh can you rewrite this like paragraph that I didn't understand in a different way. So maybe I have a different like angle to do to do that, like as a personal tool. I think it's also a thing that you can do. But like yeah, I think the the output of those large language models and I think that's something that is alluring to a lot of people is a higher level of language than they would normally write, usually write. So they think it's more intelligent than it It is right. And so it's like it's this easy thing to say like, oh, something that sounds intelligent. so it must be must be intelligent or like must must be true or something like that. Um yeah, and there are also these writing rules from the this institute really trying not to say anything in Swedish today. Um so and these are also have been recommended to me for for Swedish like easy easy text rules. So I just wanted to have them. They get all into the linked list at the you know underneath the video or on top of the video, depending on where I paste the video Um yeah. So there was a question about the examination and I want to talk about that. But first I want to ask if there are any additional questions around like text and language and anything else that I should say. Going, going, gone. Okay. So for the examination there is an article here at the bottom And should all already be published, but I don't know if this is published, so it might accidentally not be published. Let's see. This is how I find out that I did something wrong again. Yes. so oops. Um I have to say this canvas system is very difficult to like to do right. So I'm I apologize for like if things are not online correctly and it's all my fault and Hampers is like you know he has nothing to do with it. Um So so yeah, here is the in written form what we want you to do for the examination. Oh, for the examine examination on. Um and basically the idea is That you check a website for accessibility, so you do like basically a high-level accessibility test. Um, there is the W3C easy checks in there. I think you should use the new in-draft version of the easy checks, which have, you know, bookmarklets to test and like basically guide you through The tests. You also don't need to do everything. You know, we suggest color contrast structure headings, keyboard access, but basically, like you know Do do what you feel is useful for the website that you're using. Then prioritize your findings and propose solutions to at least some of the high highest priority issues So what we expect is just a list of like, oh, this is this is wrong with this page, you know, I can't use it with the keyboard, I can't see my focus. Um The button is not labeled correctly, this image doesn't have an alternative text, very high level, and then go into like a few of those and say like what I want to what I would change is this and that, you know Again, this not again, I didn't say this, but I say now. Um this examination looks for if you have understood In the grand scheme of things, what we want to like convey to you. It doesn't need to be flawless. It does not need to be like, you know, be made like an accessibility expert. That's not the level we we are judging you for. We judge you for like You know, do you understand what you're looking for? Are you able to like formulate your thoughts out and and do Yeah, and and just convey like okay what what are some issues that are found and and what is the solution for it. And then if you want the higher grade, the VG grade Then we want you to do a video pitch of the changes. Basically you say like, oh, this is what I would propose, this is the priority and then you know if you work for that organization, it's easy. You can just say like we should do this and that as an organization. Um lot of people are using their own website for this, and this is totally fine. Um, you know, , but if you if you do someone else's website, you just say like, oh, I pretend to l work for this organization and I'm If I was in this organization, I would do this and this and these would be the next steps. Um and I think Campus has a lot of that information for you strategically. And then we have the deadline for june twenty first. So it's still still a little bit time to do it. Um Would would be totally unfair it was if it was tomorrow, right? after I'm not putting it public. Um Yeah, and then yeah, like this is the basically summary at the top, and then we have the details at the bottom with a little bit more descriptions, and then at the bottom you can Oh, I don't think I have that because I'm not a student at the moment. So yeah, as a student you can click on the top right to start assignment and then you can drop, drag and drop your files in here and basically link them. And if you update the assignment, you often you want to make sure that you always upload all of your files. Because when we download them we only get like the latest version. So if you have removed a file or if you have have like let's say you have recorded a video and you uploaded it And then you upload, you know, you report because you fixed a typo and you don't submit the video, it's harder for us to find. If you don't find it and you say like, hey, I but I did the video. then you know just tell us and we look for it. But it's easy to say like hey I've previously uploaded a video file you know maybe do just a text file or just just upload the video file again, you know, if if it's not too big. Um I think Jazz can handle it. Alright. Ida, you have a question. Go ahead.

Yeah, so you mentioned how like people use their own websites and everything, but if you don't want to use your own organization's website, do you have like any tips or tricks to like well not tips or tricks but trip tips on what kind of websites we would want to use for this examination?

Yeah, good question. Um so I don't have like a particular website. I would not use something that is super popular or super complicated. So if you go to like Let's say we we had this once and I felt very sorry for that person. They were like, oh I just go and do Amazon and I'm like, no, you don't do Amazon because that's like you know, a roller coaster and they do very advanced stuff and things that like are not as easy to like test and figure out. And so you're you you're making like a lot of work for yourself and like that doesn't make sense. I would look like for things like maybe a hotel in your city or like a you know, an organic farm or something like that. You know, like

very low level not like museums.

Museums are good good version too, yeah. Museums like, you know, generally public things are are pretty good. to your own.

Exactly. But I'm thinking like those would be like in between that they should be really accessibility like good wise, but they don't really have the same thing as like well SL or like the police or something like that. Like that they really have to be like accessible. So I'm thinking like somewhere in the middle because I was also looking at I got a tip like Kaya's website the the makeup website. But that was just total chaos, kind of like the Amazon thing. I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna like you immediately find lots of things like at the start. So I'm like, okay, that's way too much. Like I want something in the middle where you actually have to like do some nitty-gritty work and like look for stuff.

Yeah. And I I think, you know, and and like You pick, you know, the the the nice thing about this is like you pick your challenge, right? Um so we we say it should be the homepage and the generic attee. article page and a page with a form. But that's mostly because you can find the issues there as easily. If you say, oh like I have this like I don't know, article overview page and then like an article and then a contact form. And I do those three instead of like the actual homepage, which has like I don't know, an autoplaying video and a big drop-down and also like, I don't know, a cow flying from left to right and stuff like that I've seen I've seen everything. Um so, you know, y th then you can, you know, just reasonably say, oh I these are the three pages that I picked, you know, so we we don't like clubs are are pretty good, you know. some people might want to do like amateur sport clubs would also be a good good pick. Um you know, I wouldn't use something professional because like then you get into like really weird stuff again. And but yeah, s stuff like this. I think Yeah, you know, don't don't pick something that's too basic because then it's like, why am I doing this? but like on the on the other hand like don't pick something that's that's too hard and if you are like on the fence you know feel free to reach out to me or humpers and say hey what's what's about this these these are my the the the that's the page I think about is this does this have you know enough or or what do you think and we can help you with that Okay, some

what was my question? Yeah, okay, so something that has been lingering in my head, which is slightly outside of this but still connected to this. is because I'm in a situation where I'm trying to convince the organization to think about accessibility and I wanna have the ammunition and the facts. I've visited World Health Organization, so I got some stats from there. Um but if you either could point me to a website or somewhere where I can read about this or if you could tell me because we want to m make things accessible for as many as possible, but I don't know how many these different segments within accessibility, like which groups are the most represented ones So cognitive, I would assume, is really big with the stressed society and infinite scrolling and everything going on and post-COVID. Mm-hmm. But like do we have any stats on the the breakdown of each kind of category within the accessibility umbrella

So it's a go good question again, , but it's also like a little bit of like the wrong question to ask. Um which which is totally fine because like you No, you you can't you can't know it if you don't know it. You know, it's like one of these situations. So the thing is like It's super difficult to like categorize and put put people with disabilities in different pockets, right? Or in different the different boxes. Um you should should never put people with disabilities in boxes in the first place. But like, you know, the categorization is difficult. Someone who might have like Someone might have like a a temporary disability and might be limping for for some time, but they might occasionally use a wheelchair, or like someone might be in a wheelchair most of the time but occasionally can't you you know i is able to like not use the wheelchair. Like where do you put like the Where do you you you say like oh you're this and that? And then there are multiple disabilities, right? Some people have like are wheelchair users and are blind, are deaf and and blind, stuff like that Um now I only think of combinations with blind people apparently. Um but yeah you can you can have like impaired feet and impaired hands. So you you know you have like multiple disabilities that way. So Super difficult to say. Every country counts it differently as well. So you will never get like this is the number. Um usually what we say is like between Ten and twenty percent, which I know is a lot is a big thing, but just how it is, have a permanent disability. Um and that means that at least one permanent disability.

Wasn't it like at some point during their lifetime? Not necessarily that I think it's that 16% World Health Organization. But I might be wrong.

Yeah, and I mean that's that's exactly where like the numbers are like what what you want them to be. Like you can you know you you have to get go with one definition and yeah, I mean lots of like of course during lifetime has always the thing that like at the end of your life you probably pick up more disabilities, right? So that that brings some people to say like, oh, young people don't need accessibility, which is not not correct because like a lot of people are born with disabilities as well, or have like accidents as childs and stuff like that. So, you know, it's like I'm I'm not like a big fan of doing the numbers game. What we know is that if your website is more accessible, between three and five percent of your users will actively profit from it in terms of like being disabled and having a better time. because that's the the number of like blind people and people with hand tremors and like that, you know, which are like those are all like parts of like the greater like disability thing. So so usually we say between three and five percent more users is what you can expect being able to use your website. No, which is like if you think about marketing, if you think about like how many like percentages your like Google ad campaign brings in, like, you know, that's a huge huge number of of things. So it's it's easy to like a lot a lot of people want to have like a concrete number and I understand that but it's it's not that easy because it also It's not the only thing that you're going to see. So one very commonly used example is Apple, for example, for there. approach to accessibility. They just put it in and they don't care if you're if it brings in more revenue or not The fun thing is it automatically does because there is word of mouth, there is like, oh I can use this more more easily. There are people who don't have a disability find use cases for it. I know a couple of years ago when iPhones still had home buttons, there w there was like a large group of people who thought like, oh, the home button could break if you push it too often. I put a ho a virtual home button on the screen and that was an accessibility feature for people who couldn't press the button, you know, fully Um so it's it's yeah this is this is difficult to say. Yeah. Um which doesn't say there isn't there are numbers and there aren't things that that you can.

This is great. So the reason why I ask is not because I need to be convinced why accessibility matters. I'm totally convinced that if you design for the extremes, you also improve for all the other users. So I I'm on board with that, but those are the type of questions that I would get from management and I have to speak their language and they are all about numbers and statistics and it's it just feels like you can go up to them and say, hey, here's a I don't know McKinsey study on this and here's a World Health Organization link for you just to get them on board. So that's why.

And I I can point you to the business case for digital accessibility that we did for W3C. I don't know if you have seen that before. Um and basically splits it up into four things. Drive innovation, enhance your brand, extend market reach and minimalize min minimalize. Legal risk. Right? Um so these are the four things and I I hate the legal stuff because I think that doesn't convince anybody to make real change just to like avoid being sued in the end. But it's it's a thing that you need to do. And so this goes into details and also has like case studies from Apple, from Google and I think from Barclays, yes, w how they implemented accessibility and I think it's a really good thing. But it doesn't only have that. I mean it's now several years old, unfortunately. How old is it? Yeah, from 2018. It got updated in July 2024. I don't know what what really changed. But like so it's it's about ten years old, but it has all these resources here at the bottom. that you can look at so so everything that is in there is substantiated and then it also has here on the left I scroll up again Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. bibliography of like more more stuff like you know accessibility as innovation and there are like a lot of like summaries and like things that you can you can refer and maybe there's something something more in there for you So that's that's my usual pitch that I that I do when I get the asked this question because I get it asked too all the time, right? It's it's a thing that just happens is it is back to top one of those accessibility innovations serving all? Um I don't know. I think I I think mouse and keyboard users are mouse users are using that a lot. Um I think screen reader users and keyboard users they have their own ways to like go to the top So I think but it it maybe it's a cognitive thing where people profit from it. Um but but I know that like people use it a lot. I usually don't That's why you see me scrolling up and down all the time because I didn't even notice the back to top link, which is funny because I programmed it into this website. So yeah, that's that's accessibility for you. Alright, any any other questions Doesn't look like it. Yeah, so if you have any other questions about the examination or like, you know, why something not online? Don't ask me that for the next three weeks because I will be on vacation. So ask Campos and he will he will answer. Um and that's that's why we had like or or why we have like I do two the you know last week and this week and three weeks in three weeks because I'm I'm I'm out of the office for for a couple of weeks. going on vacation and like get getting a breather so that's going to be nice but I'm looking forward to like coming back in May and and seeing all your nice faces again and and yeah do do more accessibility teaching with chas. And yeah thanks for being here in the live session if you're watching this after the fact Be there next time. So goodbye.

Thank you. Bye. Take care. Bye.