Design Template by Anonymous
Audiences and Accessibility
Web Writing for different audiences
Many different types of websites are useful for different reasons. You may be going to a cooking website to find a recipe for rice pudding, a website for a product you saw an advertisement for, a website to learn tips and tricks for Microsoft Excel, or any other number of websites.All of these websites have different writing styles that conform with what message they are trying to convey and with who is writing them. Lastly, these writing styles are often combined for more powerful, meaningful, or helpful content.
Narrative/Descriptive writing
When we go to websites for cooking recipes, nowadays, we expect to find a “blog” of sorts before the recipe. Many authors of these sites use narrative and/or descriptive writing to tell you a story about their recipe. For some authors, this blog could be how they make their money, or could simply be a project for them to share their recipes with the world.Often, this section is to convince a reader that their recipe is the best, and you should make their recipe over somebody else’s. This section also often includes important information like substitutions you could make in the recipe, or in-depth instructions on a specific technique.
Persuasive writing
For a product’s website, we are usually reading persuasive writing. This is writing that tries to get the reader to agree with them, and in this case, buy their product. This can be an effective way to sell a product, tell the reader about your business, or convince a reader to use your service. This writing is mainly based on the author’s opinions.Expository writing
Lastly, many searches online lead to websites with expository writing. This is a usually unbiased writing style to give the reader information about something specific. This is the kind of writing we read when we look up “how to do something”, when we are looking for the answer to a question, or looking for facts about something. The author does not give their opinion on the information given.Web writing for accessibility
There are some small ways that make a big difference for accessibility on the web. Most accessibility issues come with the way that the page is formatted, not necessarily the content, but there are common mistakes that can prevent the content from being accessible for someone using a screen reader or with impaired vision.- Headings: Don’t make headings include links or images, this causes an issue for people using screen readers.
- Images: writing descriptive “alt text” for images is important for accessibility. Alt text should be descriptive and about the meaning of the image, highlighting the image’s contribution to the content.
- Other Media: including a written, text summary alongside any longer media such as an embedded paper, a video, or any kind of graphic is important for accessibility. This allows visitors using screen readers to gain the information from the media without having to see it.
- Links: linked text should be descriptive of what the link is leading you to, not “click here” or “click this link”. Links with non-descriptive titles can be confusing to those using a screen reader, as they will not know where the link is leading.