Right here at We ❤ Well being Literacy Headquarters, we attempt to make all our well being info accessible for individuals with imaginative and prescient loss or blindness. And that doesn’t simply imply designing net content material to work with display readers—it means considering critically concerning the language these customers see on-line. Oops! There we go utilizing a vision-related phrase the place it doesn’t belong… or does it?
The English language (and the English-language web) is chock full of those vision-related phrases. So this week, we’re teasing out whether or not hyperlinks that invite customers to “see extra posts” are equally inviting for individuals with imaginative and prescient variations.
Etiquette guides for interacting with people who find themselves blind are likely to stress that phrases like “see” and “look” are fantastic to make use of in dialog. However our analysis didn’t flip up any evidence-based steerage on utilizing these phrases in net content material—so, pricey readers, we took to Twitter to search out out what real-life customers needed to say.
And, drumroll please… the oldsters with imaginative and prescient loss and blindness who responded to our (very unscientific) ballot didn’t have robust emotions about vision-related phrases in hyperlinks.
On-line, individuals are likely to learn phrases like “see” as signposts that present them the place to click on—not references to bodily sight. Utilizing these phrases in hyperlinks is an accepted conference of net content material, and attempting to keep away from them is more likely to get awkward. (“Understand extra posts” doesn’t have fairly the identical ring to it, hey?)
In fact, language and net finest practices are all the time evolving—and completely different individuals with imaginative and prescient loss could have completely different preferences about these things. All of the extra motive to maintain asking questions and, as all the time, take a look at your supplies with your viewers!
The underside line: It’s okay to make use of vision-related phrases like “see” in hyperlinks. And should you’re questioning what language individuals choose, simply ask!