Website content is often written with confident readers in mind, but many people rely on clear, consistent structure to understand and navigate information. It can also help to support content with visual cues where possible, to reduce the amount of reading required. These practices improve usability for everyone, but are particularly important for people with cognitive differences. Here are some areas to focus on when creating content for your website:
1 Use headings to create a clear outline of the page
Clear heading structure helps people quickly understand how a page is organised and can allow them to jump straight to the parts they want. Without clear headings, important information is easier to miss.
Every page should begin with one main heading that tells people exactly what the page is about. From there, divide the content into clearly labelled sections using subheadings. If a section contains multiple themes, introduce another level of heading to show they belong within the same topic.
Avoid jumping between heading levels or using headings purely for visual styling. A logical structure makes content much easier to scan and navigate. Try reading only the headings on your page, and see if they tell a coherent story of the content. If not, some changes might be needed.
2 Start with a clear introduction
In addition to making sure you use headings appropriately, there are other ways to arrange your text to make it easier for people using your website to skim through. It’s important to note that most of the visitors to your website will be skimming through your content to find the specific things they need – they don’t sit down and read one page after another in order – so optimising content for skimming can help everyone.
It’s best for each page to have an introduction, which is as short and concise as possible, while making it clear what topic the page covers. If your page covers multiple topics, it may be best to consider breaking it into multiple pages. The exception here is if you have a title that clearly sums up the page. For example if the page is called “the history of our organisation” then a summary may not be necessary. Don’t add text just for the sake of it.
3 Provide clear next steps
At the end of a page, it is often a good idea to suggest next steps a user can take, for example links to other pages that contain relevant information, or a call to action suggesting they contact you or use one of your services. It’s usually better not to reach the end of a page and leave a user unsure what to do next. Additionally, throughout the text, whenever you mention another page or service, make sure it links to those parts of your site.
4 Bold text
Skimming text can also be made much easier by making sure you use bold text for the key point in a sentence. That way, if users struggle with reading, or if they are just in a hurry, it can be much easier for them to pick out the gist of a section without having to read each word. Other styles such as using italics for names can also make skimming easier, as can making sure the text used for links will make sense on its own (e.g. avoid a link that just says click here).
5 Keep it succinct
Arguably the most important thing you can do to make sure your content is easy to read for people with cognitive differences is to keep it as succinct as you can. While you don’t want to miss out any important information, make sure you think about each thing you add and ask yourself, is it really helpful, and is there a more concise way to say it? Often it takes more work to keep things short than it does to do a longer version, but the extra work is worth it to make your website as easy to use as possible.
When writing content for your website, it’s common to fall into the trap of deciding to have a page on a topic, and then feeling the need to write content to fill it, but this can lead to filling up your site with things your users don’t really need, and drowning out the important information. For each page or section you come to, always stop and think what you are trying to say and why, and make sure you really understand the purpose of what you are saying.
6 Reading age of content
Make all the text you write as clear and simple as possible. You can use tools such as www.webfx.com/tools/read-able/ to check the reading age of your content. WCAG’s highest conformance level (AAA) recommends providing supplementary content when text requires a more advanced reading level.
Getting Further Support
Clear structure, concise language, and thoughtful presentation help reduce cognitive load and make information easier to find, not just for people with dyslexia and other cognitive differences, but for everyone using your website.
If you’d like support reviewing your website content or guidance on how to improve clarity and readability, please get in touch.