<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Congrats to Jordan, Hannah, and CDQ for taking the lead on
this important topic for our journals and field.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">My two cents: I think “accessible” is the best term in this context, but I’d
be curious to learn what others think. Through its title, the CDQ guide is now connected to other guides and websites around the web that are focused on making documents accessible for users with disabilities. I’m not sure
another term would have the same intertextual power or be able to convey the guide's purpose at a glance. Several major organizations and universities (including <a href="https://u.osu.edu/composingaccess/" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)" target="_blank">CCCCs</a>, <a href="https://webaim.org/techniques/word/" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)" target="_blank">WebAIM</a>, and <a href="https://www.section508.gov/create/documents/" style="color:rgb(5,99,193)" target="_blank">Section 508.gov</a>) have published web
pages with titles such as creating accessible documents, composing access, etc.
All are focused on designing for disability. I agree with Jordan: "accessibility" is the common term here. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">That said, there’s obviously overlap between designing
for disabled users and designing for all (two examples: Universal Design and Search Engine
Optimization). And, as Jordan points out, disability is a wide-ranging term. Several topics covered in Jordan’s guide—semantic
headings, plain language, descriptive link text (instead of “click here” links)—make
documents more usable for everyone. But the goals are not identical, even though we
have seen the interests of disabled and nondisabled users converge around several
accessibility practices—<span style="font-size:11pt">captioning being the <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/08/20/gen-z-millennials-tv-movies-subtitles" target="_blank">best example of interest convergence</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Best, </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in 0in 8pt;line-height:107%;font-size:11pt;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Sean Zdenek</p></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 11:07 AM Jordan Frith <<a href="mailto:frithjh@gmail.com" target="_blank">frithjh@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Stephen,<div>That's a good question, and thank you for asking! So the term "accessibility" is often used to talk about designing for people with disabilities, though disabilities is defined broadly to include any mobility impairments, cognitive disabilities, etc. Also, the certification we completed was called "document accessibility", so as far as I know that's a pretty common term. I also had Sean Zdenek, who's an expert in this area, look over the document and he didn't comment on the title. <br><br>I think the reason we wouldn't want to title it something like "Designing documents for people with disabilities" is because so many of us tend to have a limited view of who counts as disabled (often not including people with cognitive disabilities like dyslexia, for example). Does that make sense? I am open to suggestions for alternative titles though! At this point, it might be hard to change the title for this version at least because the link is already up, but I can think about it for the next version. Let me know what you think!</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Oct 2, 2023 at 10:17 AM Stephen Bernhardt <<a href="mailto:sab@udel.edu" target="_blank">sab@udel.edu</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Interesting and valuable work here.</div><div><br></div><div>It may just be me, but I experience some ambiguity with the phrase "Accessible Document Design." Are the recommended guidelines to assure accessibility to the widest possible audience (designing documents to be usable) or to assure accessibility to the specific audience of persons with one sort of disability or another? </div><div><br></div><div>Are these goals identical? On reading the email, I first imagined the broader, more general case. But the guidance quickly corrected me in its focus on readers with disabilities.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div>Steve Bernhardt<br></div>Bayside DE<br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Oct 1, 2023 at 2:50 PM Jordan Frith <<a href="mailto:frithjh@gmail.com" target="_blank">frithjh@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr">Hi all,<div>I'm emailing to share a resource we created at <i>Communication Design Quarterly </i>that is likely relevant to many people on this listserv:<a href="https://cdq.sigdoc.org/accessible-document-design/" target="_blank"> A best-practices guide to accessible document design</a>. I co-wrote this guide with Hannah Taylor, and it focuses on various things people can do to make your documents more accessible for a larger number of readers. The guide covers various topics, including</div><div><ul><li>designing documents to work well with screen readers</li><li>writing high quality alt text</li><li>formatting hyperlinks to make them accessible to people who use screen readers</li><li>running accessibility image checks</li><li>tagging content for accessibility in PDFs</li><li>running accessibility checkers</li></ul><div>By no means is this guide comprehensive, but we hope people find it valuable. Accessible document design is way more complex than most people realize (certainly more complex than I realized), so we created this document as a starting point for people who want to learn more about the topic. Accessibility should be centered in everything we do, so we hope this guide helps us all learn a bit more about how to make the documents we produce more accessible. <br><br>Feel free to share widely, and don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have feedback or thoughts or anything at all really :). </div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-repeat:initial">Jordan Frith, Ph.D.</span></p>
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</blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div><span class="gmail_signature_prefix">-- </span><br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34);background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-repeat:initial">Jordan Frith, Ph.D.</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Clemson University</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:10pt;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(34,34,34)">Editor-in-Chief, <i>Communication
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