
This article is based on Irina Morozova‘s talk at A11yNYC. She talked about how to make content accessible through thoughtful content and inclusive design for people who aren’t fluent in English. Irina is an accessibility experience designer. She has a linguistics and teaching background.
Irina opens with an ATM example to illustrate how routine tasks can become inaccessible when design and language don’t align with the user’s needs. When you use a familiar ATM in your native language, there’s no one waiting behind you or distractions. But remove just one element, like language familiarity or a clear interface, and the experience quickly shifts from simple to stressful.
For users with limited English proficiency, unclear instructions or poor design can erode independence in critical moments. The ATM turns into a barrier. Irina uses this to emphasize that inclusive design is essential. It preserves dignity and independence in everyday life.
Why language access matters
The main language in New York is English; hence, much of the online content is also English. A Statista graph shows that in February 2025, English was the dominant language, at almost half.
This means the other half of the people in New York do not speak English as a primary language. Therefore, almost half of the people interacting with a digital product don’t have English as their main language. If organizations don’t consider those not fluent in English, they’re potentially losing half of their customers and users.
Users with different language proficiencies vary in their skills. These skills vary by background, exposure, and context. Language speakers are not a homogeneous group. Irina uses “people with limited English proficiency” because it’s descriptive and not judgmental. It’s stating a fact without any assumptions.
Poorly designed content is a barrier for everyone. More so, for people with limited language proficiency. It can cause cognitive overload, stress, and anxiety. How can we make content more accessible and reduce stress for speakers who aren’t fluent in English?
Inclusive content principles
The key is to use plain language written for 7th to 9th grade level. Word choices and sentences are one part of it. How the text is presented also matters. This includes the use of meaningful headings, which improve scannability. They may only be interested in one part of the page. Clear headings allow them to choose the section to read. It minimizes cognitive overload.
For example, you’re planning to go to a café. You want to know if you can bring your laptop. You find the rules, but you don’t want to read the whole page. Headings can help you find the specific section.
Avoid abbreviations and acronyms before spelling them out. For example, APR may be a common abbreviation in the U.S. However, not everyone knows it means annual percentage rate. Before using the abbreviation, spell out the term to help users connect it with the abbreviation or acronym.
Also, avoid using idioms, metaphors, and phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs are expressions that combine a verb and another element, such as an adverb or a preposition. Instead of “look up,” use “search.” Not everyone knows what “snail mail” means, so using “mail” works better. “Saving for a rainy day” is an idiom. Keep it simple and use “saving.”
Design and multimedia considerations
Structure, short sentences, plain language, and word choices can get a boost when you use consistent flows, icons, and clear task instructions. Users need enough time to process. Even with good headings, the content needs to be in manageable segments.
Inclusive design means planning for error prevention and easy recovery for when a mistake happens. This is why it’s crucial to plan for accessible content and presentation early in the design process.
Like the best practices for content, there are well known rules for audio, video, and other multimedia. These include providing subtitles, captions, and transcripts. Ensure there are pauses between sentences rather than between words in audio. Non-verbal communication also matters.
Be mindful of accent comprehension barriers. Irina gave the example of an elevator’s voice being in a Scottish accent. It made it harder for some people to understand, even if they spoke the same language. Anyone can have an accent, whether a person’s primary language is English or another language. Accents can potentially add to the cognitive load. Hence, it’s important to pay attention to accents in the media.
Another important recommendation is to avoid background audio, unneeded pop-ups, and autoplaying audio and video. These can stress the user. Focus on calm technology, which means technology needs to simplify complexities, not introduce new ones.
One key to seamless technology is to use the correct language tags. When a website has the wrong language tag, it causes the content to be pronounced incorrectly.
Empowerment through respectful design
Content and digital experiences should bring joy, dignity, and empowerment. Respectful and inclusive design consists of clear and intuitive content. This happens when you plan for accessible content and presentation early in design. Apply accessibility principles, which reduce cognitive load. Think about designing with less noise and more intention.
The resources Irina shared are in the resources section of this article. They Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) that support inclusive design for limited English proficiency. She also shared resources that can help with designing intuitive, inclusive, and respectful content. As you work on designing experience, ask this question: “How can your content reduce stress for your users with limited English proficiency.”
Video Highlights
- Access to digital products is a lifeline
- Tips to create accessible content for limited English proficiency
- Seamless technology use
- Q&A with Irina
Watch the Presentation
Transcript: Making Content Accessible for People with Limited English Proficiency - Irina Morozova
Thank you. All right. I've got to make sure my emotional support bottle is close to me. All right.
Hi, everyone. So excited! I'm Irina Morozova, and I'm an accessibility experience designer. And my background is not just in accessibility and UX, but also in linguistics and I was a teacher for a while.
So... And today I'm gonna talk about how to reduce barriers for people with limited English proficiency. Through thoughtful content, but also through inclusive design. All right.
So access to digital products and having understandable content is a lifeline. It's not a luxury. Why is it a lifeline? Because access to digital products makes really critical everyday tasks possible, like... Paying your rent.
Opening a bank account. Honestly, even reading product labels at a pet store that you shop at, online. I don't want to have any fish in my cat's food. And... Those things should not be hidden behind a barrier.
And the barrier can be... You know... Content that is too complex, too complicated, to understand. Or also it can be design that this content is wrapped into.
I think a really good example of how critical clear content is -- and how critical inclusive design is -- is ATM. So one... The topic of money is generally, I think, very loaded, and can be nerve-wracking, and anxiety-inducing, for a bunch of people. And...
But also, it's so much about autonomy. Like... You always want to be able to deal with an ATM when you want to deal with an ATM. And you can have an ideal situation.
Let's say... You are withdrawing money from an ATM that is from your bank... In the country, where you live. In the country that the main language you speak... You're not in a rush.
No one is behind you in the line. And...
You know, the screen of the ATM works perfectly. The design hasn't been updated in a while. So you don't have to deal with, like, your bank releasing a new design, and you having to, like, find your way through a new ATM interface.
And maybe it's even the ATM that you always go to, that is close to your home, or close to your work, or whatever. And... If you take one piece out of this ideal situation, I think it can become worrying enough. So... One, you can have a background or a story of anxiety, trauma, connected to financial questions.
Or you can have a history of being worried about carrying cash around. Or... You can be in a rush. And then you have to solve the ATM task really quickly.
Or you can have a bunch of people behind you. Who are in a rush. Or you can have all of this, and you're at Times Square, where everyone is in a rush. And... To any of that, you can also add... And you are not facing the ATM that is in a language that you are proficient in.
I think this can be super frustrating, and this can take agency really quickly away from a person in a very critical everyday task. So... We are here in New York. The main language is English.
And also so much of content online is in English. So English is totally dominating the web content. On the graph here that I have from Statista, it shows that in February 2025, English was the dominating language, at 49.4%, which is almost half. And then after that, we have Spanish, German, so Spanish, at 6%, German at 5.6%, and Japanese at 5%, and then all the other languages are less than 5%.
And so... We can definitely say that not 49% of all the people interacting with a digital product have English as their main language. So... And if we leave people with limited English proficiency out, then we leave users out.
And we can lose our potential users, customers, clients, or we can put our existing customers, clients, users under pressure of understanding more than they are able to. All right. And with that in mind, let's talk presentation goals for today. So by the end, I hope that you'll walk out of here knowing more about writing clear, respectful, and intuitive content.
Applying design strategies to reduce cognitive load. Using just the necessary amount of users' attention span. And supporting multilingual and culturally diverse users. Oh yeah.
And you might notice that I have a weird-looking cat on the slide. I found a few Medieval cats. That are scattered around the slides. I tried my best to find ones that matched the topic.
Not always. You know, digital context, Medieval cats... And also I'm a recent first time cat mom. So it only felt true to include my baby in the digital way here.
All right. So... Let's talk about users with different language proficiencies. So... Speakers of different languages -- or, like, speakers of English -- vary in their skills... And the skills vary by background, exposure, and context.
Language speakers are not a homogeneous group. We should not generalize. We should not label when we talk about this.
And do our best to avoid terms like "native speaker", "non-native speaker", which honestly have a colonial background. So we don't want to use that. And also, when we talk about people's language proficiency, it's best to not talk about what they are not. What they cannot do.
But rather what they can do. Right? This is why I love the term "people with limited English proficiency". It's very descriptive and not judgmental.
It's just stating a fact. It's not making any assumptions. And for anyone, poorly designed content is a barrier. But for people with limited language proficiency, 100%.
Poorly designed content or poorly presented content can create cognitive overload. It adds to anxiety. You know. The ATM example.
It makes the use of technology difficult. And I'm gonna talk about the apps that scan text. The text recognition software. It takes away users' independence and chances for success.
And also it leaves the user disappointed and possibly avoiding a digital product, which... You know... If you produce a product, you don't want that. Oh, and it's about respect.
It's about respecting your user. You know, talking in the language, in the level that they can understand you in. So how can we make content more accessible and reduce stress for speakers of limited English? This was the intro.
Let's get to the business part of it. Okay. So the center is plain language. Our guidelines are: Use plain language.
Which is... The level of lower secondary education. Which is 7th to 9th grade. And for that, we have the WCAG 2.2 success criterion reading level.
Then it's not just important what the text is, but also how the text is presented. We need meaningful headings. We need structure that improves scan-ability. We want to aim for 15 to 25 words per sentence and 45-74 characters per line, to not create this unreadable wall of text that just overwhelms the user when they face it.
For meaningful headings and structure, one example would be: If a user has a limited language skills, or like... Limited reading comprehension, you don't want to make... We don't want to make them read through a very long, unstructured text. Right?
Maybe not the whole page is relevant for them. They want to be able to find exactly the section that is relevant for them, and then only read that, without spending any cognitive effort on the other part of the text. If I'm at a cafe abroad, I want to know if I can bring my laptop on the weekend or not. And I don't want to read through a bunch of rules somewhere that are in a very small font.
Right? I want to see this part somewhere. Avoid abbreviations and acronyms before mentioning the full word. And we have a success criterion for that too.
Abbreviations. And avoid idioms, phrasal verbs, and metaphors. So if we talk about the use of acronyms and abbreviations, I think a good example is: Annual percentage rate. APR. I think you can see it so often in the states, in the ads for credit cards.
It seems like it's a very well known concept for people who grew up in a culture that uses credit cards. And probably for people who grew up with some level of financial education. But, for example, if we talk about Germany, that is not as dominated by credit card use, then APR might not be a default known concept. So... We want to introduce it first, before using the abbreviation.
And then for idioms, phrasal verbs, and metaphors...
It's so much easier to understand the word "mail", versus even "snail mail", or...
You know... Instead of "look-up", you can do "search". And then...
For idioms, also... "saving for a rainy day" is, I think, such a good example. Because... If there is a website that talks about... A savings account, it's easier to understand when it's just "saving" and not "saving" plus some qualifiers.
Like... Is "for the rainy day" critical to understand this? Or is it just words there? So just "saving" is so much easier.
And even when you can kind of guess the meaning of an idiom, from the context, you're still spending some cognitive load on understanding that. And again, if it's an anxiety-related situation, we don't want to take any cognitive effort from the user. All right. So... Let's flow to flows and instructions.
Consistent flows and consistent icons are such a great support. Huge love. Then we want to have clear task instructions, and for that, we even have a WCAG success criterion, labels or instructions. A user needs time to process and have the information presented in manageable segments.
It's related to structure and headings. But even those headings need to have a manageable amount of content under them. And then ensure that there is enough error prevention and easy recovery if an error is made. And then last on the slide I have... Plan for accessible content and presentation early in the design process.
I was hoping that by putting it in the end of the slide... And by the absurdity of the late part... And talking about the early... This will make...
This will get it more highlighted. All right! Then if we talk about audio, video, and multimedia, there are some very basic well known rules. Right?
Like: Provide subtitles, captions, and transcripts.
Non-verbal communication matters. And it can include gestures, tone, facial expressions.
One of my favorites is allowing pauses between sentences in audio, rather than between words. So... Because a sentence is a chunk of information with a bunch of words, it's easier to understand when it's a finished thought. And then after the thought is finished, you can take some time to process it.
Right? Versus if it's a pause after each word, and then you don't know if this is the word that you really need to understand, or you can just ignore it, if you don't know, and go further. And be mindful of accent comprehension barriers. So... I remember that in, like, early 2000s... Mid-2000s, there was this video of an elevator that was voice operated.
That was not able to recognize someone's... I think it was Scottish accent. So I think... You know... This is a situation where someone clearly has a high language proficiency.
But also has a certain accent, which doesn't mean that they didn't grow up speaking this language. But still it makes it difficult to perceive or difficult to operate. And I think in New York, we are in such a good situation, because we face so many accents on a daily basis. Right?
There are people who speak English as their primary language, and have an accent. There are people who don't speak English as their primary language and have an accent. And I think here we are well trained for a bunch of accents that people have. Be it from an English speaking country, where English is the main language, or where people just learned English at school or, like, in some other situation.
Okay.
Yes. And of course... I have a cat here. So... Audio and video.
You know. There is a cat with... I would say... A medium struggling face.
And with something that looks like... A bagpipe? Maybe? I don't know.
One more cat. And more about multimedia. If we move from just audio and video to... You know, the whole multimedia thing, background audio, autoplay, unnecessary pop-ups, and stuff moving around are... Not a friend.
My personal enemy is the background audio. Because I don't know what to listen to.
Then we need to have content in multiple modalities. Text, video, images. And also... I know I already said it.
But subtitles, captions, and transcripts are so super helpful. And also, I wanted to mention calm technology. It's the concept that I learned about a few years ago. But it's been around for a really long time.
And it teaches us that technology needs to simplify complexities, not introduce new ones. And I really love it in this context. Because... Let's say a user with limited English comes to a website that does not exist in a different language.
They have to interact with it in English.
And this website should not be super overwhelming. It needs to take the exact amount of attention from the user that is actually needed to solve the problem. And not just be like... A Times Square of a website, where you don't know where to look and you don't know what to interact with.
I know I mentioned Times Square twice already. But... You know.
Oh! Did I... Oh yeah. And another cat.
I think playing lute. I don't know. But definitely also Medieval. What else?
And then also to go from content and design to a little bit more of a technology side of that... For seamless technology use... Correct language tags are really critical. And we have WCAG 2.2 success criteria for that.
Language of parts. And language of page.
So let's say there is a German website that is mostly in German. But there are a few pages that are translated into English for international users. But... The language tags, even on the English content pages, are still German.
And then if it's... If it gets read out by a screen reader, it will be read out... You know, it will be English read out with a beautiful German accent. That, you know, would be pretty difficult to understand.
I think for a person for whom English is their primary language, because the words just sound so differently... But definitely for a person who has a limited English proficiency... So language tags. And also... We need enough time to translate the content as needed.
You know... If something needs to be translated, if the user needs to step away, we need to ensure that the page doesn't lock them out. That they still can come and continue the task where they left it off. That there are enough warnings, how much time they have, before they get locked out, et cetera.
I know that this is easier now, when the vocabulary or, like, Google Translate, is in the next tab to the website. That... You know... Still.
All right. And also... To continue the technology stuff... I want to talk about OCR.
Which stands for... Or I'm sorry... About optical character recognition.
So... Here I have two screenshots. One is Google translate app. And it's the button with the helper text that says: Take a photo of words to translate.
I think this button is labeled as instant camera translation in the app itself. And then the second one is the iOS detect text function in the camera app or in the photo app. So... Both of these optical character recognition softwares will work best if there is strong color contrast, if the fonts are legible, and if there is a simple layout.
When I talk about simple layout, I think about, like, mid-2000s magazines. Where... And mid-2000s, because I don't remember when I bought a printed magazine, the last time. But it had... Let's say the heading in big letters, in the middle of the page.
And then the article would be around the heading. So in this situation, visually, we can understand which part is the bigger text and which part is the heading. But if we talk about the optical character recognition software, it might put this larger text in the middle of the other line text. And I think also another context for that would be: If you're trying to translate a chart... Not translate.
If you're trying to use the text recognition on a chart, it might also read it not top to bottom, left to right. Sorry. Mirrored. Top to bottom.
Left to right. But... It might just go line by line. And then it's your own task to understand which part belongs together.
Yeah. And here also we need enough time to translate the content as needed. For strong color contrast, I think it's another point going back to the ATM.
If the ATM screen is cracked and not as bright as it should be, if the sun outside of the branch -- or if it's a drivethrough ATM is too bright, and the user who, let's say, doesn't speak any of the languages that the ATM offers, and they try to scan it with their Google Translate app, you know, something might not be caught, if the contrast is not high enough. Okay. You might notice that the design here kind of like... Asks for something on the side.
On the slide. And you might ask me... Is there a Medieval cat for that slide? There is no cat.
But there are traces of a cat. And I think this is such a good fit for talking about text recognition. Because... This is handwritten.
And this is not a modern font. I think it's pretty difficult to recognize with software. And also... There is a pattern of a cat that walked with their paws and left ink stains on the manuscript.
Which... You know... Would also be in the way of recognizing the text. But I want, you know, to give this text a positive spin.
The contrast is really good. Because it's black text on white background. So at least that's something.
All right. Okay. So... Takeaways.
The cat that you already saw at the Goals slide.
We want content and digital experiences to bring joy, dignity, and empowerment. When someone learned a foreign language, when someone... Not foreign. When someone acquired a higher proficiency in a language that maybe they didn't grow up with... It's really empowering to be able to complete a task on your own.
Without anyone's help. Having enough time to complete the task, having a task description that is clear enough. So... Write clear, respectful, and intuitive content.
Plan for accessible content and presentation early in design. Classic. Use accessibility principles to reduce cognitive load. And less noise, and more intention.
And...
Before I go to questions and answers, I want to ask you to consider: How can your content reduce stress for your users with limited English proficiency?
All right. So this is a thing to think about on your way back. The resources I have are the WCAG Guidelines, it's the Guideline 2.2 Enough Time, the Guideline Readable, and then other resources that I used and that I use... That I used for this presentation and that I use... Are US Federal Plain Language Guidelines, really good.
Designing Content for People with Limited English. This is a UK.gov design website. Which is amazing. Writing for an ESL Audience.
And then another article that -- the last link is the article that I think gives a really good spin about... Really good perspective on people and their language abilities. It's about native speakerism. What is it and why does it matter?
And then also... As promised... Some tools for plain language. Hemingway App.
Flesch Kincaid App. Readable. They are focused on determining the level for I think American context. And also for English but also not English languages... Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.
CEFR has a CEFR text analyzer. And it allows you to just paste the text that you have a question about. And it will tell you if it's, like, the basic proficiency or higher. Or... You know... Unlimited proficiency.
Yeah. And then... For questions and answers, I have this questionable cat in a snail shell. All right.
Thank you!
[applause] All right. Thanks, Irina. That was awesome. I'm gonna have to go back through all your slides.
And dig deep on them. That's amazing. Okay. We'll go back and forth, and we've got plenty of time for Q and A. So we'll go back and forth between in-room and online.
I'll start right here. Wow. This is why I love to sit in front. Thank you!
Thank you, Ben. First of all... Thank you so much for this presentation. Especially... I feel like those apps give us something to work with.
One question I had, as you were talking about -- you mentioned the word "clear". But it would be great to have some examples, because I think "clear" can be very subjective. I think most people think they're communicating clearly, when they're not. And I can say... As a daughter of an immigrant mom... Who... She actually... When she speaks English... Kind of has a Jewish New York accent, because she learned English from my dad and my Jewish Grandma.
But it's interesting. Like... You know, when using something like text-to-speech, for example, I find that if I'm not enunciating perfectly, often I will be frustrated with that. My mom has a tendency to save her kind of... What she calls "bloopers" on text-to-speech, when she's using it.
My question to you is: How do we define what is clear? And I would think that it's very individual, depending on what country you're coming from. So... Anyway, lots of thoughts.
I'll catch you for more of them later. But thank you so much for this. A lot of food for thought. Appreciate it.
I think for clarity... You know... I think the more subjective things are the reading level calculators. There are also lists of vocabulary that is expected on a certain level.
But yeah. I think it totally... It totally depends on the context...
Yeah. On the context that a person is interacting with. You know, some people are super proficient in one topic of a language. But then if you move away from that, if you move to medicine, or something, or... If you listen to an MTA announcement, you suddenly are really not proficient in understanding.
Yeah.
One from online. Are there recent studies that looked at what spoken English is most widely accessible, such as... British English in a lower pitch? For example.
This is a good question. I'm gonna look it up. I'm gonna look it up. Check back on the Slack!
Yes. If you're part of our Slack community. Which I'll shout out later. We're gonna answer follow-up questions there.
Another in the room. Yeah, sure. We'll come back over here.
Thank you. Just real quick... What should we know or consider in terms of iconography, when considering creating an experience with limited English proficiency? That's a good question.
Yeah. I feel like there are some icons that are pretty easy to understand, that are very widespread, and partially thanks to Facebook... Because we have the gear for settings. And we have... The person outline for the profile.
Or... I feel like there are so many universal ones. I love how MTA does it with the... Oh, turn around and go to the other side of the station.
Right? It does this weird U-turn thing that I don't remember seeing in other places. Right? I feel like... When you see an icon that is understandable, you know that this is an understandable icon.
Oh, or like... I think this question also comes up a lot with... The floppy disc for save. Right?
And it's not a question of the language proficiency, but also of the... Exposure to something. And generation. I don't know.
Are some icons like idioms? Are they cultural? Right. I think at some point there was this Google or Google Image study, where they asked people to draw a house or a fish.
In a certain way.
And then... They put all of those images together. And you kind of see that the house is mostly like a square with a triangular roof and whatever. But if you look at a fish, then the majority of fishes are swimming left to right.
But there were a few fainter outlines of fish swimming right to left. So definitely... Cultural. I feel.
Yeah. One thing we find in our testing is that pairing an icon... Even when there's very little space, trying to find a way to pair an icon with a label, because there are... You know... Often in user testing, we find that something we all think...
Well, obviously that's super obvious! Nobody would not understand what that is! And... Invariably, you know... A reasonable percentage of the users we test with just go... Yeah.
That was not apparent to me at all. So... We definitely have kind of groupthink, even when we think we're being inclusive. So we've definitely found that pairing labels -- or even just not using icons and just using text labels whenever possible -- makes it both more kind of cognitively accessible and easier to localize and easier to internationalize as well.
But... Designers love icons. And labels! On the buttons.
Buttons with a label and an icon. Yes. Do you feel the designs in everyday life have gotten better at plain language, in the last years, like -- are things improving in the space? Okay.
So... I've only been in the States for 10 years. So I cannot say much about how MTA improved in those 10 years.
People who lived here longer probably would understand better. I think... So I don't know. But my thought would be that now we can do more testing, because of internet, and more access to users, right?
We can gather more data... I think that we are predestined for it to be improving. And be clearer. Also... How good will we be trained to talk to technology after years of interacting with AI?
Right? And you need to be clear, talking to ChatGPT. Otherwise you will get something unclear. So... I think we're gonna just get better.
So thank you, Irina, for sharing this great insight with us. I have a comment that leads to a question. Would have been great to see examples of some of the points you made. Like, for example, the pausing after every sentence.
If there was an audiobook or something that has that, so we can see what that looks like in practice. Because some of these things are a little unclear on what kinds of standards I should be aiming for. So maybe in the follow-up, on the Slack, if you could put examples of some of these points you made on your slides so I can better internalize it. As the saying goes: Tell me, and I forget.
Show me, and I might remember. Involve me, and I understand. So seeing some of these principles that you were designing might be really helpful. Can I repeat what you said?
Just to verify that I understood it? So you said to find and post... Examples where... Let's say something is more difficult to understand, with limited...
Yeah. Some of these design principles. Like the audiobook one you had about the pausing after every sentence. I don't know of any examples of that in practice.
So it would be great to see that. So my question is... Is that... How helpful is the phonetic spelling technique for limited English learners?
Because I find when I'm speaking to people that have a hard time pronouncing or understanding terms, I use that technique to help them learn how to say certain things. Have you seen that technique in use? Or is it not really useful for technology? Can you give an example?
So spelling the name... Like, for example... My name... You know, in Spanish, is pronounced José.
In English, it's pronounced Jose. The Asian pronunciation is Joze. So I use phonetic spelling for Asians to say... It's actually pronounced José, hose-ay.
And this is used for complex terms, things like that... Things that aren't normal... Have you seen phonetic spelling in use where you spell it syllable by syllable? I can't think of... The names are such a good example.
When I introduce myself to someone, I'm like... Irina. And people are like... What?!
Especially around Halloween it works really good. Irina, like eerie. And it works great. But yeah.
Okay.
So not yet? I think like... Especially with English, spelling things out... Like... Letter by letter... Is not super helpful.
Because W is not pronounced "duh". That's why I said... It's syllable by syllable. It's not like... You break down the word into how it's pronounced so the person can learn it.
I was curious if you've seen that. And the last question I have is... Going back to Xian's question about intent versus impact. Because it's a really big deal.
You think you got it clearly. But obviously -- and you were mentioning this too, Ben, in your user testing -- somebody inevitably won't understand. Are there any good ways to benchmark -- that you're not locked in this echo chamber, or principles that you've seen, that could help us make sure that we're really designing for a population that we usually don't have much understanding of?
I mean, I think the guidelines... The US federal guidelines, on plain language, are great. Again, us.gov guidelines are really good. But yeah.
Testing. I love the echo chamber mention.
There are not specifically... Kind of broad reach user testing platforms like Maze and similar, where you can... For relatively affordable costs do kind of a broad range of testing. They're not disability-specific testing.
They're not like Fable or something like that. But it's kind of... Broad... Larger user pool for relatively low cost per user.
And you can target -- you can slice down to a reasonable subset of different user groups. And some of them do identify with...
Alternate primary language. So it might be another resource. Let's see. Do you have advice on making audiovisual and multimedia content accessible in multiple languages?
You touched on this, I think, during the presentation a bit. Right? Yeah. Also, if we talk about multiple languages, here it's important to think... Like...
How many languages can you include? Right? And here... User testing... Not user testing.
Well... I guess user testing. Knowing your target audience is really important. The dominating languages will be different depending on the country or depending on the region, even, in the states.
And there... Let's say... 2 to 5... Translating your website or product into ideally 2 to 5 top spoken languages in that specific region.
Under the clients that you're targeting -- users that you're targeting -- is the goal.
I'll come back around to the front.
Thank you so much for the talk. I was curious about... I think touching on one of the answers you gave earlier... How do you make very complicated systems, such as healthcare and finance, with your annual percentage rate example -- how do you make those more accessible for people with limited English proficiency?
Is it sort of just like... Giving them an info button to learn a definition of something? So... If we talk about abbreviations, then it's mentioning the whole phrase first.
Annual percentage rate. And then mentioning the acronym in the brackets. And then you can continue using the acronym, because you already referenced it when you first time mentioned it. Like... If you write about accessibility, you don't want to start with a11y.
You want to start with accessibility [a11y] , and then you can continue using it.
I feel like having additional information in a tooltip is usually not a super good idea, because... Whatever is not... Oh my God. Not "unwrapped", but "collapsed"... "expanded" -- whatever is not expanded would probably not be read.
On the other hand, if this is something that appears over and over on your website, I feel like... With the WCAG guidelines, we have some terms that also have, like, a tooltip. But then you also can go down, and then this is where all the terms are explained. I mean, theoretically, you can also have, like, a separate...
I don't know... Footer area. Where you explain all the things. But that would be so much.
And then you would have to repeat it on every page. So would, like, a glossary help? Yeah, but then you would have to, like, either repeat it, or reference it, over and over... Yeah.
The term... Being linked to the [inaudible]... That's true. The comment online was, you could link the glossary term.
Yeah. Also, I think a really good example is that we have Wikipedia in easy English. Sorry. Simple English.
Right? So that's also such a good example of the complex situation. Also using the basic information with basic words.
Someone from online also had a comment. She said: A lot of Irina's advice is very similar to the best practices in captions and subtitles. There's a reason why they're best practices. Okay.
Thank you for all this information. I was wondering if you had any ideas or guidance on evaluating some of these techniques at scale. I think something I've been trying to do with my own work is sort of figure out like... Identifying areas that need improvement, and also evaluating areas where... We've made improvements.
And seeing if they've performed as we expected. Because I find, like, reading levels and things like that to be very... Not helpful. In that regard.
I need to maybe think a little bit about this. Let me take it with me and then again... I'll post a thing.
Maybe if you can ping me on LinkedIn or in... Okay.
Another from online. Regarding icons on the contract I work on, we always use icon plus label. I know -- not possible in all circumstances, but may be doable in more cases than we think. All right.
Another one. I think up front here... So... First of all, great job with the presentation.
This was really fascinating to think about, as it applies to my work that I have coming up. But my question is: So you mentioned all of these apps that could translate the content into different languages. But the apps aren't accurate. So once the content gets copied and pasted into the website, is it checked by a human that actually knows the language?
That's actually a great question. And this goes back to the question about, like, how to deal with the multilingual content on a website. We cannot really rely on machine translation without... Not spellchecking it, but... Without proofreading it and verifying that it actually makes sense.
Does this answer your question? Yeah. I was just wondering... Are there?
Like, is it someone's job to translate... Not to translate, but to look over the content that the machine writes? That sort of thing? Yes, yes, yes.
It should be someone's job to... A content designer, a hired translator, you know, whoever does that. But we need a human who understands the context. I know that we had a talk about how much AI can do.
Last month. I want to push for humans.
AI plus humans is the right... Yeah. Okay.
I think we are... In order to let our interpreter and captioner go on time, I think we are at time for questions.
But for anyone in the room here, feel free to continue the conversation. Stick around. Let me show my slide. My email if you have any questions, and also the QR code for LinkedIn.
And thank you so much. There is a very royal cat here.
Thank you. Thank you, Irina!
Bio
Irina Morozova is a seasoned accessibility experience designer with a background in linguistics, teaching, and UX. Her work highlights the importance of clear communication, cognitive accessibility, and culturally sensitive design that supports users with varying levels of language proficiency.
Her passion for accessible design comes from her own experiences navigating multilingual environments. This personal perspective fuels her commitment to crafting content that not only informs but also empowers users from all backgrounds.
Resources
- Hemingway App
- Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) – CEFR Text analyzer
- Flesch Kincaid Calculator
- Readable
- Calm technology
- Federal plain language guidelines
- Designing content for people with limited English
- Writing for an ESL Audience
- Native Speakerism – what is it and why does it matter?
- WCAG 2.2 Guidelines