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Accessibility guidelines: for writing and beyond

Writing for accessibility includes ensuring screenreaders can read the text, content is organized, style and color of text emphasis are readable, and more.

Accessibility is an important aspect of any good web project, and docs are no exception. As one advocate puts it, “… if the content design is simple, concise, and clear you are already doing a lot for both a11y and localization.” The term a11y is what’s called a numeronym, or shorthand in this case for “accessibility”, where 11 is the number of letters between the a and the y.

See also reducing bias in your writing.

And for general writing style, see style guides.

Good introductions to accessibility

• MDN Web Docs introduction to accessibility

• Accessibility for Everyone

• Collection of resources for doc accessibility

• Introductory edX class from W3C, free

More resources

• Web accessibility training and courses from Deque

• Web accessibility class from Google, free on Udacity

• Game UX guidelines from the BBC

• Mobile UX guidelines from the BBC

• Pan-European project on providing education on accessible design

• Web-a11y Slack (you’ll need to google and find someone to DM, or please submit a PR to the WTD website repo if there’s a better way to join)

Exhaustive resources for web accessibility

• WebAIM, from the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University

• Collection of articles and other resources from Stark, a commercial a11y company

• IBM’s Equal Access Toolkit

• Atlassian Design System - Inclusive writing reference

• MailChimp’s writing style guide

• A11Y Style Guide

• The Accessibility Cheatsheet by bitsofcode

• Microsoft Style Guide Accessibility Terms

Relevant talks from Write the Docs:

• Moving beyond empathy: a11y in documentation (available on our YouTube channel <https://www.youtube.com/c/WritetheDocs>_)

• A11y-Friendly Documentation from Write the Docs Prague 2018 (available on our YouTube channel <https://www.youtube.com/c/WritetheDocs>_)

• Inclusive Tech Docs - TechComm Meets Accessibility from Write the Docs EU 2015 (available on our YouTube channel <https://www.youtube.com/c/WritetheDocs>_)