Clear language

Normative Text

Users can understand the content without having to process complex or unclear language.

This guideline will include exceptions for poetic, scriptural, artistic, and other content whose main goal is expressive rather than informative.

See also: Structure as these guidelines are closely related.

To ensure this guideline works well across different languages, members of AGWG, Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force (COGA), and internationalization (i18n) agreed on an initial set of languages to pressure-test the guidance.

The five “guardrail” languages are:

Arabic
English
Hindi
Mandarin
Russian

We started with the six official languages of the United Nations (UN). Then we removed French and Spanish because they are similar to English. We added Hindi because it is the most commonly spoken language that is not on the UN list.

The group of five languages includes a wide variety of language features, such as:

Right-to-left text layout
Vertical text layout
Tonal sounds that affect meaning

This list doesn’t include every language, but it helps keep the work manageable while making the guidance more useful for a wide audience.

We will work with W3C’s Global Inclusion community group, the Internationalization (i18n) task force, and others to review and refine the testing and techniques for these requirements. We also plan to create guidance for translating the guidelines into more languages in the future.

User needs

This content needs to be written.

Key Terms

accessibility support set: group of user agents and assistive technologies you test with

The AGWG is considering defining a default set of user agents and assistive technologies that they use when validating guidelines.
Accessibility support sets may vary based on language, region, or situation.
If you are not using the default accessibility set, the conformance report should indicate what set is being used.
accessibility supported: available and working in the user agents and assistive technology in the accessibility support set

The working group intended to include a default accessibility support set. See Default accessibility support set #277.
conformance: satisfying all the requirements of the guidelines

Conformance is an important part of following the guidelines even when not making a formal Conformance Claim
See the Conformance section for more information.
content: information, sensory experience and interactions conveyed
guideline: high-level, plain-language outcome statements used to organize requirements

Guidelines provide a high-level, plain-language outcome statements for managers, policy makers, individuals who are new to accessibility, and other individuals who need to understand the concepts but not dive into the technical details. They provide an easy-to-understand way of organizing and presenting the requirements so that non-experts can learn about and understand the concepts.
Each guideline includes a unique, descriptive name along with a high-level plain-language summary. Guidelines address functional needs on specific topics, such as contrast, forms, readability, and more.
Guidelines group related requirements and are technology-independent.
human language: language that is spoken, written, or signed (through visual or tactile means) to communicate with humans

See also sign language.
informative: content provided for information purposes and not required for conformance. Also referred to as non-normative
programmatically determinable: meaning of the content and all its important attributes can be determined by software functionality that is accessibility supported
requirement: result of practices that reduce or eliminate barriers that people with disabilities experience
sign language: a language using combinations of movements of the hands and arms, facial expressions, or body positions to convey meaning
text: sequence of characters that can be programmatically determined, where the sequence is expressing something in human language