2.5 Readability

Carefully watch the language you use for the writing on your page. Perfect technical accessibility cannot help you if your reader cannot understand your writing.
Poorly formatted page text can detract from your page's readability.
Long paragraphs are difficult to read on digital screens.
Poor text spacing, such as word spacing created by justified text, makes pages hard to read for people with dyslexia.
Literacy research has concluded that half of American adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level.

Solutions

Write in shorter, clear sentences and paragraphs.
Use headings to break your articles into readable sections of text.
Always keep your audience in mind.
- Use the most appropriate language for your audience.
- Avoid jargon and figures of speech.
- Avoid using unnecessarily complex words and phrases.
- If this is unavoidable, consider providing a glossary for terms readers may not know.
Expand acronyms on first use. For example, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is the source for these writing tips.
Consider illustrations (images, video, audio) to help clarify meaning.
- Don't forget to include alternative methods for understanding them such as alternative text for images and closed captioning/transcripts for video.

Use list formatting as appropriate.
Don't use underlined text — this is reserved for links. Use bold text for emphasis instead.
Avoid using all caps for text.
Avoid justified text.
Left align text to keep word spacing consistent.
Do not mix fonts within article paragraphs.
- On a given page ideally use only one heading font and one paragraph font.
- You can use multiple weights of each font for emphasis — bold versus regular font thickness.

Classic editing is fabulous. Having someone else critique and/or edit your work before publishing is the perfect way to catch readability issues.