About this guide

The purpose of this guide is to help you write in a way that makes sure the information on our website is clear, consistent, relevant and easy to read.

Our website is a popular way for people to find out about the council. We want to improve and encourage that experience year-on-year as the communication channel of choice.

We want visitors to our site to find useful information about our services quickly and easily. This guide aims to help the maximum number of people to find, read and understand the information they need, with a minimum amount of fuss.

Accessibility

The Disability Discrimination Act brought about new rights for disabled people.

Employers and service providers must not discriminate against a person for a reason connected with their disability. They must also make reasonable adjustments to the way in which they offer their services. 

This applies as much to websites as it does to making sure council offices are wheelchair accessible.

But accessibility is not just about making sure that disabled people can access information. It is also about making sure that a wide variety of users and devices can all gain access to information, thereby maximising the potential audience and allowing users to experience the pages the way they choose to.

Creating an accessible website

An accessible website accommodates the full range of users. Designing for accessibility therefore means accepting that, for online information, there is:

• no standard user – for example, a user may be blind, partially-sighted or have learning disabilities
• no standard device for browsing information - for example, may be viewing our website on a PC, laptop or mobile phone.

An accessible website does not exclude anybody due to:

• their abilities
• the method they choose to access the web.

Accessible websites have clear content, structure and ease of navigation over frilly aspects of design. They don’t have to be visually unattractive, nor are they prevented from using the latest web technologies, such as flashing images and animation, provided that all information is still accessible to users.

The Government requires that all public sector websites should meet certain guidelines on accessibility.

Web versus print

Writing for the web is not the same as writing for print. What works well on paper will not always work on screen.

Follow these top tips to make sure you are writing in the best way to get your message across:

Write for your audience

The user must be at the centre of everything we do.

We must be careful to publish content that the user ‘wants to see’ rather than what we think they ‘need to know’.

The primary function of our site is to enable visitors to find useful information about our services, quickly and easily. Remember to put the user first.

Always keep your reader in mind when you are writing:

• Are you providing them with the information they need?
• Are you allowing them to complete the task they want to achieve?

Use clear, conversational English that a global audience can understand.

Remember, residents will have varying knowledge of the language used by the council:

• Think about the language you use.
• Try to use words people are searching for.

The remaining pages of this guide will give you some easy-to-read tips to help you change your writing style for the web.

Task-based writing

Most of the time our visitors will want to find information about a service and find out how they can make use of it. They will not be interested in who provides the service, nor which part of the council that team belongs to.

You should therefore concentrate on the task they need to achieve, or the information they need to find, and not the team behind it.

When considering content, try to anticipate all the questions the reader will want to know.