V. Accessible Content
5.2. Writing for the Web
5.2.2. Write Less
If the Internet is a highly visual medium, it is nonetheless a textual medium. Indeed, people tend to write a lot on the Internet: through their blogs, where they speak about all the things that are close to their hearts; through forums or discussions boards, where they can argument their point of view; and through their company’s homepage, where they can show that it is the best.
However, people often tend to write too much, because they don’t really understand the subject, or because they don’t see how to summarize...
Krug’s third law of usability (which can be linked to accessibility here) states “Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left” (Krug, 2006, p45). Krug more especially refers to two kinds of writings: happy talks and instructions. He also notes that reducing the lengths of these two kinds of text content brings the following benefits:
- “It reduces the noise level of the page.
- “It makes the useful content more prominent.
- “It makes the pages shorter, allowing users to see more of each page at a glance without scrolling” (Krug, 2006, p45).