Tips on creating clear and concise content for your site.

When creating site content, it’s important to keep accessibility in mind. This includes the language you use, the structure of your text, and the way you organize your content.

This guide provides tips on how to create content, and organize your site, with accessibility in mind.

Note: This guide is available as a resource to help you get started, but shouldn't be construed or relied upon as legal advice. Squarespace can't provide advice about making your site compliant with any specific accessibility laws, regulations, or standards.

Clear and concise language

Well-organized, brief, and clear text is helpful for all visitors, especially those with impairments. When writing text for your site, consider the following tips:

• Use clear language and formatting.
• Write in concise sentences and paragraphs.
• Avoid using jargon and unnecessarily complex words and phrases.
• Expand acronyms on the first use. For example, Top-level domain (TLD).
• Use bulleted lists when appropriate.
• Consider using images, video, and audio, to help clarify meaning.

Titles

The first thing screen readers communicate when visitors go to a new webpage is a title. If the page has an SEO title, screen readers will read it and skip the page title. If a page doesn't have an SEO title, screen readers will read the page title.

Providing a short, specific, and unique page title helps users navigating via assistive technology quickly understand a web page’s content and purpose.

Title best practices

When writing your titles, you may want to consider the following:

• Introduce the page’s topic and purpose.
• The title should differentiate the page from other pages on your site.
• Put the unique, and most relevant information first. For example, “Accessibility guide” instead of “A guide on accessibility.”
• For pages that are part of a multi-step process, include the current step in the title. For example, “Choose the color of your product (Step 2 of 3) - ABC company.”

Text

Headings

Screen readers use HTML code instead of visual elements to understand a page's structure. When using a screen reader, visitors can better navigate pages when each section of the page has a heading. Search engines also use headings to better understand your content, so using headings is a great way to give your site an SEO boost.

To learn more about page structure and headings, visit the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Links

Clearly describe the purpose of each link in the link text so visitors using assistive technology can jump between links without losing context. Properly formatting links also helps improve SEO. You don't need to include the word “link” in the link's text. Most screen readers say “link” before each link.

For example:

Spacing

Ensure your text has adequate line spacing. This way visitors can override your line spacing to suit their needs and improve their reading experience if needed. You can control letter spacing and line height in Site Styles.

Colors

You can customize your site colors using site styles. However, avoid relying solely on color to convey information to your visitors. Color differences can be missed by people with low vision or color deficiencies. Also, color alone doesn't convey meaning to blind visitors using screen readers.

You can use Google Chrome's Developer Tools, or Firefox's Accessibility Inspector, to simulate how your pages may be experienced by people with common color vision impairments.

Note: These are third-party tools that fall outside the scope of Squarespace support.

Forms

Forms can be challenging for some visitors. It’s important to ensure each field is clearly labeled, and that the form is easy to navigate. Use a text block to include brief instructions that inform visitors exactly what they need to know to appropriately complete the form.

You can include placeholders with text that appear in the form fields as an example for visitors. This way, visitors have a better idea of how they should complete the form. Keep in mind that placeholder text shouldn't replace the label text. You can read more about placeholder text in our forum.

Note: Custom code modifications fall outside the scope of our support. This means that we’re unable to help further with setup or troubleshooting. Additionally, with a code-based solution, we can’t guarantee its functionality or full compatibility with Squarespace. This includes how it functions with our responsive design, particularly its appearance on mobile devices, and if it functions on all templates. Custom code can also cause display issues with future updates to our platform. While we can't help further, there are many resources that can point you in the right direction:

• Learn best practices for adding custom code.
• Read our general guide on third-party customizations.
• Hire a Squarespace Expert to help build custom code for your site.