Using plain language when writing for healthcare is key to helping people understand and improve their health. Marli Mesibov offers advice on how to write in plain language.
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PREPARED BY
HEALTHY LANGUAGE IS
PLAIN LANGUAGE
@MARSINTHESTARS
March 11, 2020
Mad*Pow
Marli Mesibov, VP of Content Strategy
Mad*Pow
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Content strategy is only
successful if it delivers the right
message to the right audience at
the right time.
…and if the audience can
understand it.
@marsinthestars
Marli Mesibov, VP Content Strategy
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Why are you here today? Maybe you want to…
• Understand what separates plain language from other content
• Gain confidence in looking for resources to reduce jargon and clarify language
• Feel comfortable and confident using readability and SEO tools
• Know how to measure the success of plain language across a specific population
@marsinthestars
Plain Language Webinar: Goals
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• Easy to read
• Easy to understand
• Created for this audience
• Can be used to meet specific
needs
@marsinthestars
Plain language overview
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We live in a complicated world, where health, wealth,
and education do not come easily.
We need plain language to make people healthy,
wealthy, and wise.
@marsinthestars
Why do People Need Plain Language?
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@marsinthestars
Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise
Need to be healthy to:
• Work
• Make money
• Process information
Need money to:
• Buy nutritious food
• Get higher education
• Decrease stress
(improve health)
Need knowledge to:
• Know how to take care
of your health
• Know how to save and
spend money
We need good communication for all three
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Some of the tools and processes we’ll look at:
Tools
• Readable.io
• Hemmingway app
• SEO Moz
@marsinthestars
Tools and Process
Processes
• Health literacy planning
• Population
empathy/sympathy
• Jargon elimination
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Inclusive design keeps the diversity and uniqueness of each
individual in mind.
Not designing for “anyone” or “everyone” but for each person.
(Yes, it’s more work.)
@marsinthestars
Inclusivity
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Personas may be old hat, but MPACT behavioral personas skip
demographics in favor of understanding why people act.
@marsinthestars
Inclusivity Requires Understanding
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@marsinthestars
Inclusivity Requires Planning
Source: Design for Real Life
“Placing personas within
different potential contexts –
here, varying times of day –
can help you identify stress
cases.”
- Erik A. Meyer and Sara
Wachter-Boettcher
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“The good physician treats the
disease. The great physician treats
the patient who has the disease.”
- William Osler
@marsinthestars
Inclusivity Requires Context
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Consider Health Literacy Levels:
The degree to which individuals
have the capacity to obtain,
process, and understand basic
health information and services
needed to make appropriate
health decisions.
@marsinthestars
Context: What Information Does Your Audience Have?
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• What is the problem?
• How does the user speak about it?
• How would they describe it?
• Where can we educate, and where can we learn?
@marsinthestars
How to Approach Plain Language Content
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Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines
Managed by The World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) - the main international standards
organization for the World Wide Web.
Around since 1999
@marsinthestars
Enter WCAG
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Current version: 2.1 (updated 2018)
Updates WCAG with modern web considerations
Mobile / adaptable sites
Responsive sites
Touch interfaces
@marsinthestars
Enter WCAG
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Say AAaaaaa
WCAG Guidelines come with three levels of testable
Success Criteria:
A: Essential / “the basics”
AA: The de-facto expected standard
AAA: Advanced or specialised (but worth looking at)
@marsinthestars
Enter WCAG
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@marsinthestars
1.1 Do you have alt-text for charts and infographics?
Worst:
Bad: alt=””
Unhelpful: alt=”a bar chart”
Better: “a chart showing League
Points for 2019. The Jaguars
scored 24, the Ocelots 36, and
the Ligers 12”
Best: alt + text alternative +
interactivity
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@marsinthestars
1.4.1 Are you using more than just color to convey information?
Source: https://theblog.adobe.com/4-golden-rules-ui-design/
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@marsinthestars
2.4.9 Do your links make sense independent of context?
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
Click here
Read about accessibility
Fill out a contact form
See more case studies
Learn more about cancer
Download “Accessibility” white
paper
Find a doctor
Discover our research labs
If a screen reader sees “Click Here” it makes no sense
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@marsinthestars
2.4.9 Do your links make sense independent of context?
VERB e.g. Download
VERB + NOUN e.g. Download PDF
VERB + DESCRIPTIVE NOUN e.g. Download accessibility PDF
The secret to good links is specificity
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@marsinthestars
Creating a Voice
For each adjective that defines your brand, identify:
Why it matters
What we know about users.
How we do it
Describe what this voice means/sounds like.
What it sounds like Not…
1-2 sentence example 1-2 sentence example
On the Website
1-2 sentence example
Not…
1-2 sentence example
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@marsinthestars
SEO is Your Plain Language Secret Sauce
Good SEO means good content:
• Choosing 1 word/phrase to be the focus of your page
content
• Using that term in your title, in the page text, and 1-2
headers (but not spamming with it!!)
• Linking to external and internal pages related to your key
phrase
• Using language your audience uses (inclusivity!)
• Using alt text for images, charts, etc. (accessibility!)
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@marsinthestars
Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise
We can use inclusive
language to simplify and
personalize healthcare
We can improve financial
wellness by making
everything (health,
finance, and other
content) accessible
We can make knowledge
more fun and easier to
find with good SEO
We can create plain language for all
This helps avoid false empathy, e.g. “I have learned about x population, now I feel like them.”
Worth mentioning, WCAG doesn’t update very often, but when it does it is significant. If you have some familiarity with WCAG from a few years ago its worth checking in again now. The recent 2.1 update fixed a lot of gaps and brought a ton of benefit to mobile users. These new rules don’t over-write any 2.0 rules, btw.
J: W3C determines whether something is ESSENTIAL, whether it can be REASONABLY ACHIEVED by teams, and whether WORK AROUNDS would work if the criteria isn’t met. Legal cases generally refer to the AA standard. But, there is plenty of stuff in AAA that is worth looking at and using where you can.
Ironically WCAG Itself is not very accessible. At least to someone like me. It looks like it is written to lawyers or developers. Actually this version is a huge improvement in clarity and usability over past.
However other folks have felt like i do and taken it upon themselves to make more user-friendly versions of the same guidelines. I personally likeWUH-CAG.com for a clear well illustrated breakdown of the guidelines.
J: W3C determines whether something is ESSENTIAL, whether it can be REASONABLY ACHIEVED by teams, and whether WORK AROUNDS would work if the criteria isn’t met. Legal cases generally refer to the AA standard. But, there is plenty of stuff in AAA that is worth looking at and using where you can.
Use a plugin to show the alt tags in the browser. Here’s an example from the economist. Look carefully and you can see that many of these are not very useful and just mirror the article subtitles. They have their CMS feeding the alt tags but not in a terribly useful way.
This example from Royal Institute for the blind. They are being intentional about which images get ALT tags and which are set to empty, meaning the screen reader won’t read them.
M: charts and infograhics have their own challenges, and this is a big topic in its own righrt.
A simple chart could be dealt with by an alt tag.
But that approach wouldn’t scale well for a complicated chart with many data points.
One preferred way of dealing with more complex information is to give both a simple summary - the sort of thing a sighted user might grasp at a glance, like ‘Jaguars, Ocelots, and Ligers competed for League Points” as well as a full text-only alternative that gives equivalent depth of detail.
M: charts and infograhics have their own challenges, and this is a big topic in its own righrt.
A simple chart could be dealt with by an alt tag.
But that approach wouldn’t scale well for a complicated chart with many data points.
One preferred way of dealing with more complex information is to give both a simple summary - the sort of thing a sighted user might grasp at a glance, like ‘Jaguars, Ocelots, and Ligers competed for League Points” as well as a full text-only alternative that gives equivalent depth of detail.
M
Screenreaders can be sent to read just links
Those words “click here” mean nothing out of context
Even if the text above says “We have the best breast cancer specialists in the state. Want to meet our specialists?” Click here doesn’t represent that. “Meet our specialists” would.
M
Screenreaders can be sent to read just links
Those words “click here” mean nothing out of context
Even if the text above says “We have the best breast cancer specialists in the state. Want to meet our specialists?” Click here doesn’t represent that. “Meet our specialists” would.
M. HHS recommends health info be written not above 6th grade . Flesh Kincaid is the most used / recommended.
M. HHS recommends health info be written not above 6th grade . Flesh Kincaid is the most used / recommended.
There are a lot of reasons you may not be able to say specific password details. But you can still offer more options.
There are a lot of reasons you may not be able to say specific password details. But you can still offer more options.