Accessible UX Writing

Now, there's one thing, all UX professionals seem to have passionately agreed on: To make digital products available to everybody, we need to make sure to remove all barriers for users of all abilities. This, too, applies to UX writing, which is why in this class, we will dive deeply into one of the most important aspects of writing for digital interfaces: accessibility. Let's begin by taking a look at accessible on-screen text, which will we put our focus on in the first course of this series.

As always, let's kick this course off with some groundwork and some motivation to keep going! In this first lesson, we will briefly discuss what UX writing is, and then we'll take a closer look at why accessible UX writing is important – from ethical and legal reasons to marketing-related and sales-related reasons.

We'll start with the very basics: In this lesson, we will learn about the diversity of our audience and about the different forms of impairment users can have, ranging from permanent impairment over temporary impairment to situational impairment.

To provide accessible UX writing, we need to understand screen readers. This is exactly what this lesson is all about! Let’s see how screen readers work and how our users interact with digital interfaces while using them. Also, we complete this lesson by using a screen reader on our laptop or mobile device to get a more practical idea of a screen reader-based user experience.

As we know, this first part of the course is all about on-screen text, so after the first lessons have given us a nice introduction about diversity and the user experience in general, it is now time to put our focus on on-screen text, which is the visible long copy and microcopy that appears in the design of digital interfaces (it's what we usually mean when we talk about "UX writing"). Let's quickly learn about the differences between on-screen text and alt text, and then head over to the next lesson to find out how to make sure these text elements are accessible.

What does it take to write accessible on-screen text? Let's take a look at the first rule that we should keep in mind: Always provide context and ensure clarity.

The second rule is all about putting your design and text elements in the right order: Which information should users receive first in order to be able to use the interface, for example, with a screen reader? Let's find out in this lesson.

Links and buttons are some of the most important design elements for users when navigating through a digital interface. Therefore, writing clear copy for them is absolutely crucial. In this lesson, we'll discuss how to do exactly that.

Emojis can spice up your on-screen text A LOT. This is why they are often used in headlines, long copy, and even in microcopy. However, when it comes to accessibility, we should keep some things in mind to make sure that our emojis don't compromise a seamless user experience.

In this last lesson of the first part of this course, we will take a look back at what we've learned, and: you will get an exercise to practice your newfound knowledge! Yay!

Let's take a look back and check what we've learned in the first course of this two-course series.

Yes! We're done with the first part of this course! Now it is time to head over to the second part of this course, in which we will focus on alt text. Alt text consists of text elements that are not visible in the interface but can only be detected by screen readers, which is why they are very important for creating an inclusive user experience. Let's dive deeper here.

Time to get back on track! If you have taken a break between the first and the second part of this class, you can use this lesson to refresh your knowledge about what we've learned in the first part of the course (if not, feel free to skip – don't worry, you won't miss out on anything important, if you have just watched the first part).

After some introductory words, it's now time to dive into the depths of alt text. Let's find out what alt text is, how it works, where it appears, and why we need it – all in this lesson, which we will close by doing an exercise to learn more about the practical use of alt text.

Not every visual element in the interface needs to have alt text. But how do we know where we should add alt text and where we shouldn't? This lesson will show you how to tell one from the other.

In this lesson, we will go through all the guidelines we have to keep in mind when writing accessible alt text – from using functional instead of visual descriptions to keeping information short and relevant and avoiding personal attributes. And: we’ll also look at some examples to make our point clear.

Let’s take some time to talk about more practical aspects of writing alt text: In this lesson, we’ll learn how to involve keywords in our alt text (and well, how not to), and how to document your alt text so developers can work with it.

Almost the last lesson, so it's time to share my personal tips and tricks for making your UX writing accessible. Among other things, we will talk about why it can help to read your text out loud before publishing it, and why it is crucial to becoming aware of unconscious biases.

In this lesson, we will quickly go through everything we've discussed in the second part of this class and you will meet your final exercise of this class – your class project.

Let's take a look back and check what we've learned in the second course of this two-course series.

Let's take a moment and say goodbye to each other!