Aphasia-friendly Content Guidelines
- Alex.Lilja (Unlicensed)
The following guidelines will help you create aphasia-friendly content, whether it's for digital to ensure it's easy to read for people with aphasia. If you have any questions about creating aphasia-friendly content please contact Caitlin Longman in the Accessibility Team for advice.
Text
Try to reduce the text as much as possible.
Check your reading level, and aim for a grade 6 or lower. If you find your reading level is too high try to reduce your sentence length or consider using alternative words for higher reading words. For example, discussion could be changed to talk.
Thinking about spacing to break up different topics.
Use Arial font (our brand standard for emails) size 14.
Consider using bold text to highlight key information. Or if writing to people with aphasia embolden keywords in all sentences. Remember to not bold connecting words like ‘and’, ‘to’ or ‘the’. If you have a chunk of information do not bold the same words again and again, for example ‘Stroke Association’. Bold them once and then embolden the additional information it applies to.
Write contractions out in full. For example: don’t becomes do not.
Avoid the use of jargon or abbreviations. There will be times when these will be needed, and it would help to explain what the terms mean. For example, thrombectomy is a medical procedure…
I would highly recommend not putting pictures in an email unless you are using a formatted template. Pictures can disrupt the text and can make reading the email on a phone challenging.
Ensure that all links are clear and that readers know they need to click on the link to access more information.
If you share an attachment please ensure that you refer to it in the body of the text so it is not missed. It is recommended to share Word attachments rather than PDFs as they are more accessible.
Accessible Documents
Consider all of the above recommendations.
Recommend creating and sharing documents in word to be highly accessible. Individuals then also have the opportunity to change the font size or background colour to suit their own needs.
Check that you have added alt text to your image or removed the previous alt text that might not be appropriate for your document. Keep your descriptions short but provide the information that the image gives. For example, ‘A young stroke survivor attending a group meeting’.
Right-click on your image
Select format picture
Select the icon layout and properties
Select ‘alt text’
Now edit or write your title.
We are also aiming to make our alt text descriptions more inclusive so you might want to think about how your description helps to represent diversity and inclusion and describe that in your ‘alt text’.
It is important for more formal documents that the correct headings are used. This helps the screen reader to read the text in the correct order.
Use black text on a white background or our dark purple on a white background. If in doubt check with Creative Team to make sure the colour contrast is sufficient.
More will be added to this section in the future.
Aphasia-friendly documents
Apply the above recommendations.
To make a document aphasia-friendly it must have:
Short sentences in plain English.
Topics chunked into short paragraphs (3-4 sentences max)
Bullet points encouraged
Minimum font size 14 and use Arial
1.5 spacing
Use of images and/or icons to support context
Reading grade 6 or lower
Check with a screen reader
These documents use additional images on the left-hand side of the page. Images must be consistent in style. The images are there to support understanding and content. If they do not provide additional information then please remove them.
We will have the accessible image library in April 2023 which you can start to use. Images from the accessible image library can be used together with icons. We will create some brief guidance about how to use the images.
This guide is helpful for visual aids but we do not put boxes around text as we have found that can interfere with readers. Accessible Information Guidelines
If you are asking for a response, offer options. For example, online, telephone, and face-to-face.
The Accessibility Team is always happy to spend some time looking at a document together. We have time blocked in our diary under Accessibility Surgery, feel free to pop a meeting in during this slot.