ABC of accessible communication

This text provides instructions and guidance for more accessible communication.

Outi Salonlahti, Aura Linnapuomi and Maija Karhunen / Culture for All service

Kuvituskuva: Käsinpiirrettyjä ihmisiä käsikädessä

Content:

Introduction

Article 27 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that ‘everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits’.  This means that both institutions and artists have the responsibility to increase the accessibility of art. Good accessibility arises from the whole, all parts of which are important. 

You can improve the accessibility of your work by aiming at the following:

  • Your communications reach different people in ways that are accessible to them.
  • People with a poorer financial situation also have the opportunity to experience your art or work.
  • Your works are placed in accessible spaces.
  • Those coming to see your work are welcomed equally and with respect and appreciation.
  • You provide opportunities to experience your works through different senses.
  • You facilitate understanding by considering different learning styles and providing information in different languages.

This document focuses on accessible communications on an artist’s work.

Communicate to everyone

Accessible communications mean that you as the artist take care of the basic matters that ensure that as many people as possible can easily receive information on your art and work. This document provides guidance and advice for more accessible communications, whether the medium is a press release, a website, an artwork or a part of an artwork. This document focuses on communicating about art, but the advice also applies to ensuring accessibility in general.

If you collaborate with an organisation, also ask them to consider accessibility in different ways, for example with the methods of this document.

Targeting communications

käsin piirretty kynä / hand drawn pen

When you communicate on your event or work, consider how you can reach as many people as possible through different routes and channels. The following questions can help in this:

  • What communications channels will you use? It is recommended to communicate through different channels and on different platforms. Not everyone uses social media, for example.
  • What is your audience? Will your communication reach members of minorities as well? Which groups are underrepresented or entirely missing from your audience and/or your press release/invitation lists? Who in the creative industry or which consumers of art have been marginalised? How can you ensure your message reaches a variety of groups?
  • When you plan your communications, do you collaborate with different parties such as minorities?
  • Do your communications express in a variety of ways that everyone is welcome?

Clear language and communications in different languages

Using clear language that is easy to understand helps people to receive information about your art and your work. Not everyone is familiar with the professional language of the arts. The following can help you make your communications clearer:

  • Make sure to explain all difficult terms and keep your sentences concise and clear.
  • Maintain a standard word order, as it is the easiest to understand.
  • Use the active voice (‘someone does’) instead of the passive voice (‘a thing is done’).
  • Make sure your text is structured and use subheadings.
  • Tip! Find the parts that need improvement by reading the text out loud or translating it to another language, or ask someone outside the art world to read the text.

More information on clear language in Finnish is available on the following websites among others: Näin kirjoitat selkokieltä (the link directs to a page on Selkokeskus’s website in Finnish)

Use several languages when possible. You can publish summaries in other languages, for example. Different languages can also be a part of the content of your piece and its presentation. If you can use plain language and sign language, this will further increase the accessibility of your communications and work.

Word choices and terms

käsin piirretty kirja / hand drawn book

Pay attention to what words you use to refer to people, phenomena and other issues. Words and expression are also a form of power use and they contribute to how we perceive our reality. If you are unsure what words you should use to refer to people or groups of people, you can study the communications of organisations advocating for these groups or people, for example. You can also ask the organisations or the people themselves. You can also consider the impression readers will get when they read your text. Who is wielding the power, who is the expert or who is the agent, and who is the subject of the power use or activity?

When communicating on accessibility, always describe the activity, the service or the space, not the users or the participants. This ensures that the users of the space can decide for themselves whether the space will be convenient for them. This also relates to the message communicated on the relationship between people and the environment. It is important to convey that barriers are the result of the environment and not something caused by the features of the individuals themselves. For example:

  • Say ‘This space is accessible’ instead of ‘This space is suitable for wheelchairs’.
  • Say ‘There is a 3 cm threshold at the entrance and the ramp is too steep according to recommendations’ instead of ‘Wheelchair users may find it difficult to enter without assistance’.

Note that people should not be defined solely by one of their features. For example:

  • Say ‘people or artists with disabilities’ instead of ‘the disabled’.
  • Say ‘people experiencing poverty’ instead of ‘the poor’ or ‘poor people’.

Remember that these concepts can be expressed very differently in different languages. Remember to check the appropriate translations for different terms from the language versions of this document (Finnish, Swedish) or directly from an expert organisation, for example.

Communicating on accessibility

Whenever you or someone else communicates on your work, art or an event related to these, make sure that the communication always includes information on the accessibility of the work or event. You can let the organisation organising the presentation of your work that communicating on accessibility is important to you and ask them to ensure that information on accessibility is easily available for your audience.

Share the following on the accessibility of an event:

Accessible format and layout of communications

The following guidelines will help you create materials with an accessible layout.

  • Make sure that the contrast between text and its background is sufficient. This helps people with low vision to see the text better and receive the information conveyed in it.
  • Use a sufficiently large and clear font.
  • Remember that lowercase letters are easier to read than CAPITAL LETTERS.
  • Do not use italics or bold extensively. They only work for highlighting short parts in the text such as names.
  • Only use underline to mark links within a text online. 
  • Text over a background or pattern is difficult to read. Avoid placing text over images.
  • Do not convey any vital important with colour alone.
    • People see colours differently, and categorising information by colour alone is not a good solution for everyone.
    • Also take red-green colour vision deficiency into account, which makes it harder to distinguish between reds and greens.
  • Remember to keep it clear.
    • Make sure that the most important information of the text is easy to distinguish.
    • For example, a visual overload of many effects or moving elements on websites can make it more difficult to understand the website and read its content.

Website accessibility

Whether you are creating your website yourself or buy the design, consider the following aspects that will make using your website easier and make them more accessible:

  • Use clear headers for menus. This makes it easier for everyone to navigate your website.
  • Keep the structure of the pages the same throughout the website. Menus that switch places or disappear and other changes to the structure make it more difficult to use the website, particularly if the visitor has visual perceptual difficulties.
  • Place basic functions such as the language menu and search bar where they are commonly located on websites. For example, the language menu is usually located at the top of the page (usually in the top right corner specifically), the main menu is usually in the upper section of the page, and the search function is also usually at the top of the page. Most users look for these functions in familiar places, meaning where they are usually located.
  • Avoid fancy tricks. It is important that the functions of your website work as they usually work on websites. For example, underlined texts are links and nothing else, buttons look like buttons, and elements that are not buttons do not look like buttons. This makes using the website easier for everyone, but especially for those that have any difficulties with learning, understanding or perception. 
  • Add alternative texts (alt texts) to images on your website. This ensures that people with low vision are also informed what the image contains. If an image is purely decorative, it does not need an alt text.
  • Mark all headers as headers and define your header hierarchy correctly. Mark lists as lists.
    • When you make or update a website, you can mark headers and their hierarchy (e.g. Heading 1 or H1, Heading 2 or H2, etc.).
  • Make sure that the links you create are informative, meaning that the link itself contains sufficient information of where it will direct (a link that only says ‘Read more’ is not informative). The link must state whether it downloads a file, directs to a form or a video, or takes the user to another website when they select it. An example of a good link text is to have the header of the page that the link opens as the link text.
  • If you include PDF files on the website, provide the information contained in them in some other format as well (preferably a regular HTML site, or alternatively a DOC file, RTF file or ODT file) because PDF files can be difficult or impossible to read with a screen reader.

Website accessibility audits and testing

The technical implementation of your site considerably affects its accessibility and the opportunity visitors have to gain information from your site if they use a screen reader or other assistive technology. Make sure that your website complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2, the link directs to an external website). The newest version of the WCAG was published in October 2023 and an official Finnish translation does not yet exist. You can read the Finnish version of WCAG 2.1 here (the link directs to an external site).

You can hire an external auditor to assess the accessibility of a finished or an incomplete website. You can ask for an audit from audit services of the Finnish Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities’ Papunet online services unit (the link directs to the Papunet website, only in Finnish) and the following company owned by the Finnish Fed­er­a­tion of the Visually Impaired: Annanpura (the link directs to the company’s website, only in Finnish). User testing by testers with different functional challenges can also help with assessing accessibility.

You can also test the accessibility of your website yourself to a certain extent.

  • wave.webaim.org is a free tool for website accessibility evaluation.
  • You can check the sufficiency of the contrasts on your website with the following tools: WebAim.org: Contrast checker and contrastchecker.com. These can also be used to checking files to be printed.
  • If you use Apple devices, you can use the built-in screen reader VoiceOver to listen to the content of your website. You can also download a free screen reader on your computer called NVDA. Using a screen reader requires some learning, if you have not used one before.
  • Note that although testing your website yourself is useful, tools cannot detect all the issues that a human would find. This is why we recommend always using an accessibility auditor.
  • For more information, see: Saavutettavuuden testaus [Accessibility testing] webinar (the link directs to the Moniviestin website in Finnish). This is a short webinar by the University of Jyväskylä on free online accessibility testing tools and using the accessibility checkers of office software.

Accessible communications in social media

You can also communicate accessibly on social media platforms. The following guidelines will help you reach a more diverse audience on social media:

  • Add an alt text to the images you post on social media or describe the image in the post description.
    • This ensures that people with low vision are also informed what the image contains.
  • Place hashtags (#) at the end of your post.
    • Embedding them in the text can make the text harder to read, especially for people with dyslexia or using a screen reader.
  • Capitalise the first letters of hash tags with multiple words.
    • Example: #ArtForEveryone or #MusiciansLife
    • Parts of compound words do not need to be capitalised, e.g. #Biofriendly or #Superhero.
    • The capitalised first letter helps separate the words from each other, especially for those with dyslexia or people using a screen reader.
  • Use emojis sparingly.
    • Screen readers do recognise emojis, but if there are many of them, they can make the text frustrating to read.
    • Also remember that people understand emojis differently. Do not convey information or a joke solely with emojis.
  • When posting an Instagram or Facebook story or similar, note that screen readers (currently) cannot read text in Stories posts and you cannot add an alt text to images posted to Stories.
    • Social media platforms may fix this in the future, so the situation may change.
    • Currently (in 2024) the most accessible story post is a video where the same information is conveyed with speech or audio, text and in sign language.
    • Also make sure the contrast between the text and the background is sufficient if you add text to your story, and add subtitles to speech.
  • Remember the other basics as well: share information on the accessibility of your event in its Facebook event, use clear language and several languages, etc. (These are discussed in other sections of this document above.)

Thank you to Laura Asunta from the University of Jyväskylä’s Centre for Multilingual Academic Communication for giving comments on the content of this document. Other people to be mentioned or thanked? Sources or similar?

Tips and more information: