With the likely adoption of WCAG 2.0 (the second version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) in Australia, organisations might be reviewing their website design and templates to meet the new standards in 2010. What they might forget though, is to check their content or update the skills and knowledge of those who produce it.
Continue reading “Don’t forget the ‘C’ in WCAG – a resolution for the new year” »
Writing good page titles is one of the more challenging aspects of writing for the web. We only have 60–70 characters to work with—characters that are extremely important. The words we use in page titles play a key role in search engine optimisation. Most search engines give them more weight than words elsewhere on the page. And given scan-reading behaviour, well-written page titles are more likely to be noticed by web users in a page of search results. The trouble with page titles is that we don’t give them enough attention.
Yesterday, a participant in my workshop said she felt there was no point planning content for a web page. In her experience, content approvers made so many changes to the content, that it barely resembled the original draft. She felt any work she did to plan a page would just be wasted. Fair point, but is this a good practice? At the very least, it wastes her time. It probably also wastes the time of content approvers. And who knows if this kind of process leads to useful, usable content for their customers? I doubt that it does.
I gave a talk called ‘WCAG 2.0 for writers’ at an accessibility forum recently. Preparing for it gave me the time to think some more about WCAG 2.0—the new(ish) version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. As a web content specialist, I find the new guidelines disappointing. Content is the reason people use websites, but these guidelines do little to foster quality content. And I think they are weaker on content standards than the earlier version. Let me explain why I’ve come to this view.
Publishing content online is relatively easy, fast and cheap. It’s one of the great things about the web, but also one of its downsides. Too much content gets published online because it can, rather than because it should. Many websites heave and groan under the weight of too much low (or no) value content. Sadly, their users do too.
Continue reading “Don’t publish online just because you can” »
I’ve been reviewing and editing a lot of web content lately. Two current clients have large information-dense websites. The content is produced by staff who are not professional writers, and they probably have little time to devote to writing—let alone planning. But lack of planning has been a key problem, and in particular, understanding the purpose the content.
Continue reading “Definining and refining the purpose of a web page” »
I blame journalists for the growing use of these two awful words: ‘undertake’ and ‘undergo’. They litter newspaper headlines and articles. I hear them on the evening news program almost every night.
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