All of the content strategy guidelines included here in Trello are also available and consolidated in their entirety at the following Google Document.

We identified a number of voice and tone keywords in our strategy. Here we expand upon them in order to provide Trinity web content writers and editors some guidance on how to convey these keywords implicitly as part of their work.

Welcoming

Directly address your audience as ‘you’ and describe the institution or parts of it as ‘we’. Lead with language that invites and assumes inclusion rather than that which emphasizes how exclusive or challenging something is to be a part of (even if it may, in fact, be those things).

Unpretentious

Basically, don’t sound too full of yourselves. Avoid overly lofty and academic language - this isn’t a dissertation or peer review paper. Avoid overly bureaucratic language, even for process-heavy content. Assume that the user wants to succeed and be helped, and isn’t a burden—this will help process and requirement content to feel less fatalist and more aware of what might be complex or difficult to understand.

Intelligent

Be smart—don’t dumb down your writing. Write to a high school reading level or above in a way that you’d speak to your students in class. Respect their intelligence, but don’t overdo it. Avoid niche terminology and unnecessarily opaque phrasing.

Thoughtful

Thoughtfulness is implicit in how we’ve built the website—what appears where and when. In copy, this comes through as speaking directly to the reader and being empathetic to their needs, emotions, and thoughts at the point at which they are encountering your content. Don't just write as if the content is being read in a vacuum. Consider what may have come before, what logically comes after, and the state of mind someone is in.

Curious

Don’t be afraid to ask questions of yourselves and the reader. For more academic areas, end paragraphs with statements that show that there’s still more to discover. Position faculty members as lifelong learners—experts, yes, but always striving to discover more. Position students as considerate of things they haven’t figured out yet.

Proud

Given that there’s an entire section on the homepage dedicated to stories about what you are proud of, we have this pretty well covered. That said, don’t downplay your accomplishments. Be real—not humble, not pretentious—about what you’ve accomplished.

Energetic

Energetic doesn’t mean ending everything with an exclamation point. Rather, carefully choose active verbs and descriptive adjectives when labeling pages, building news and story titles, and wordsmithing calls to action.

What is web accessibility?

According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), “Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web.”

Web accessibility must encompass all disabilities to the web. This includes visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities.

Why is web accessibility important?

Creating an accessible website is just right thing to do. Everyone should be able to get the full value and utility out of your website regardless of the abilities they have. And making the web more accessible improves it for everyone.

How do you know if your website is accessible?

WCAG 2.0 is a stable, reference-able technical standard. It has 12 guidelines that are organized under 4 principles: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. For each guideline, there are testable success criteria, which are at three levels: A, AA, and AAA.” - WC3 website

But there is currently no industry standard tool for testing against WCAG compliance. The same website code may pass a particular compliance criteria on one tool’s test and fail another tool’s test.

Additionally, Fastspot’s work with a number of tools has identified known false positives that get incorrectly flagged by particular testing tools, meaning code that is compliant is sometimes flagged as out of compliance. Fastspot’s commitment is that once we’re done, the tools we provide create error-free accessible webpages when paired with compliant content.

The reality is that keeping your website compliant is an ongoing process, not a finite project. The act of creating and maintaining an accessible website is one that begins with the very earliest steps in strategic planning, and continues long after launch. Your migration of content in the new website will have an impact, as will every piece of content created thereafter.

Let people know accessibility is important to you

Because there is no industry standard for testing compliance, whether or not a website is compliant can be subjective. One of the most impactful things you can do is demonstrate an ongoing good-faith effort related to maintaining accessibility. Fastspot recommends having a dedicated page in the footer of your site to talk about your accessibility commitment and initiatives.

Accessibility page text

Your accessibility page should be specific to you and your resources, and should emphasize your commitment to equal access and fixing issues for people with disabilities. Fastspot recommends using the following language as a starting point, while adding in the specific resources and methodologies your organization uses:

• We welcome students, faculty, staff, and visitors with disabilities. We are committed to ensure an accessible, welcoming working and learning environment for individuals with disabilities, including compliance with federal and state regulations.

• [Ways you try to ensure accessibility for web based content.]

• [Who someone should could contact if they have issues with web based content.]

• [Links to accessibility policies or guidelines]

Creating compliant content

Good web writing and SEO practices will play a huge role in making sure you are producing accessible content. It is also important that you create an internal checklist that can cover common repeatable tasks content creators should keep in mind. The list below is a great place to start.

• Transcribing video content.
• Writing descriptive titles, captions, calls to action, and “alt tags” for images. Images and media not only create a more engaging experience for your visitors, but they also contribute to the content being more useful and valuable.
• Use clear and descriptive alt tags, file names, and captions (when appropriate).
• Using the H tags for headlines and ensuring they are properly order. These are important for sighted users as well as people who use assistive technologies. A screen reader can recognize the code and announce the text as a heading with its level, beep or provide some other auditory indicator. Screen readers are also able to navigate heading markup which can be an effective way for screen reader users to more quickly find the content of interest.
• Avoiding acronyms.

Search engine optimization (SEO) may feel overwhelming and complicated. But the good news is that if you’re following good web writing practices, you’re probably well on your way to having great SEO.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of creating a website or web page to have markup and content quality that is optimized for search engines like Google, Bing, and other major competitors.

Good SEO practices have the ability to increase a site’s page ranking and search engine visibility. As a marketing strategy, SEO can provide better placement within the search results, thus providing higher levels of exposure to outside audiences of users seeking related content without the use of paid advertising.

Things to remember

Think of Google like a real person

Site visitors are unlikely to read whole pages of text unless they know that the content pertains to exactly what they are looking for. Use clear, descriptive, and keyword-rich text for page titles.

Use keywords wisely

Include primary keywords in the page title (H1) and keyword-rich phrases in the copy at least twice. Use secondary keywords in page headlines and content where appropriate. Try not to think of keywords as things you have to force into your content. They should be a natural expression of what you are trying to convey, and what your visitors will naturally be searching for.

The next most important item is the first paragraph

After the page title, the introductory paragraph in an HTML p tag provides further context to Google about what the page is about. Use this paragraph to summarize the contents of the page with relevant and useful keywords.

Check your SERPS

Search engine result page snippets (SERPS) are the pieces of rich content that are rendered to search engines to help a search user determine if the page is relevant to their search. Search engines will use page titles and meta descriptions where provided to fill out this content. In the absence of that metadata, the search engine will make its best guess from the first paragraph of the page.

The simplest and easiest way to see how a page will appear in search engines is to search for the terms and see what comes up. You’re ensuring that the page title and the explanatory snippet will tersely convey the content on this page.

Use “alt text” when appropriate

Search engine spiders and people using screen readers cannot see what is being shown in images. Based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, each image is required to have alternative text, or “alt text.” Use the “alt text” to clearly describe the image contents.

Recent industry-wide recommendations advise that “alt text” is only necessary for images that actually contain text that isn’t otherwise included in the page and/or are imperative to understanding the content. For example, a flyer that contains event information within the image would benefit from “alt text” containing the same event details.

Use naming conventions for image files

Images are a very rich form of content. Because of this, naming conventions for image files themselves, along with the alt attribute text, should be well thought-out to lend clarity and context.

Provide titles and transcripts for videos

Including video transcripts on separate pages does aid in search engine optimization of the content, but will not drive traffic directly to the page on which the video is mainly featured.

How do we ensure that we’re emphasizing SEO?

Historically, SEO practitioners have been in a sort of arms race with search engines, trying to find a way to game rankings and artificially increase the visibility of specific links. Search engines are focused on the end user, and are continually developing new ways to skirt these tricks. Consequentially, the best way to have good SEO is to create content that meets users needs; the search engines will follow.

The most important focus can be summed up pretty simply:

1. Create good, well structured content
2. Link it to other content so users can find what they’re looking for
3. Update it regularly so that search engines know it is fresh