7.6 Content

Good news: eco-design, and concerns for attention economy and accessibility have a lot of overlap and share a list of recommendations.

Writing clearly

Write in a concise manner and prioritize bullet points lists over blocks of text, both because people do not read online as they read a book (texts should be adapted to the format being used) and because of accessibility aspects. Explain all abbreviations, signs and acronyms.

Ideally, in order to meet the AAA accessibility criteria, content should be understandable for anyone with a grade school level of reading proficiency. Otherwise, there should be an alternative method of delivery for the information so that it is accessible to these profiles.

Making browsing easier

Use style sheets to structure the information with titles, subtitles, quotes and texts.

All websites must offer two of the following three browsing methods: navigation menu, site map, and search engine. Do not forget to describe the content in the metadata of each page to improve the search results.

Presenting the text with accessibility in mind

Information must remain visible and understandable even when the style sheets are deactivated or the font size is increased to 200%. As a consequence, do not put essential information in images.

Do not justify the text: the variable spacing between words can make it more difficult to read for people with dyslexia. Likewise, line spacing should be at least 1.5 in paragraphs and the space between paragraphs at least 1.5x the value of the line spacing, in order to respect AA accessibility norms.

These best practices are not a comprehensive list of how to make your content accessible. Following them is not enough in and of itself but it does contribute towards overall accessibility for your website.

Optimizing indexing

The purpose of streamlining the user journey is to allow them to reach what they are looking for as quickly as possible. So good indexing is key to reduce the time spent and number of pages visited to a minimum. If the website is properly optimized for search engines, the user will find what they are looking for more easily and avoid having to go through multiple pages, thus reducing the journey's footprint.

In addition, eco-designing the website means reducing the size of the pages and therefore the loading time, which is one criterion used by search engines like Google to establish a hierarchy of results. Moreover, many eco-design best practices also fulfill accessibility requirements, which is yet another factor that improves indexing. An eco-designed website will therefore have a higher chance of landing near the top of the search results (see Persuading decision-makers: focus on indexing).

All in all, the eco-design approach not only applies best practices for Search Engine Optimization but also improves indexing through its frugality and accessibility.

That being said, eco-designing content is not limited to these few best practices.