The importance of language for accessibility

Why do so many people make it so hard for people to understand what they do, or what they sell?

As I’ve said many times before, accessibility isn’t just about visual impairment, it’s about everything that could make it difficult for anyone to use your website, and one of those things is language. Sometimes it feels like some of the people behind the words on a website are deliberately trying to exclude a sector of the population by overuse of jargon and specialist words, which may be the intention, but by doing that they’re excluding a large section of society who may have key skills to offer other than the ability to translate jargon.

For example, I’m a web designer. I describe my job as “building websites that look good and work to help you achieve your business goals”. But I could just as easily have said “I am a digital architect who creates the visual and interactive aspects of websites, combining artistic, coding and architecture skills to design the layout, colors, graphics, and user interface of a website, making it visually appealing and user-friendly.”

I know which description I prefer, and I know which would get me more accessibility and googley goodness points. Do you?