What is Inclusive Content?
‘Inclusive content’ is content that addresses a diverse and broad audience, and does not exclude any groups or individuals. Hence, inclusive content should:
- Not contain hurtful, offensive, or divisive words or terms
- Contain images of different kinds of people
- Be accessible (through image alt-texts, and clear and readable font, for example)
How to Create Inclusive Content?
1) Identify Blind Spots:
While having a target audience will help narrow down your focus, it will not get you any accolades as far as content is concerned. This is because a buyer persona rarely fits every kind of buyer; if your imagery and language only targets a narrow demographic, you run the risk of isolating potential customers from other demographics. At the other extreme, you may also end up alienating the audience for which you are writing.
By understanding who you are currently creating content for and how you can widen that net, you will automatically start to create more thoughtful and appealing content. This, in turn, will improve your relationships with various internal and external stakeholders, and help you better meet your content marketing goals.
2) Use Simple and Thoughtful Language:
Review your content language from an inclusivity perspective. Avoid using collective labels or terms that promote objectification, like ‘blind’, ‘aged’, ‘Christian’, or ‘female’. Make sure to use gender-neutral language (for instance, instead of using ‘salesman’, ‘manpower’ or ‘mankind’, use ‘salesperson’, ‘workforce’, and ‘humankind’).
Keep in mind that a person’s age, gender, religion, nationality, race, ethnicity, and religion are but one faucet of their wonderfully complex personality.
3) Improve Content Accessibility:
You should not only write up content for a wide range of audiences, but you should also make it accessible for them.
For one, make sure that screen readers can easily interact with all your site pages, and especially your blog page. Create relevant image alt-text and do not see it as just a way to stash keywords into your content. Screen readers use alt text to describe visual content. For this very reason, you should also include captions in all your videos.
Other ways to make your content more accessible, are:
- Ensuring that your site can also be navigated through just a keyboard
- Ensuring that the site does not trigger negative physical reactions
- Improving the site color contrast (more on that below)
- Ensuring that your site is compatible with all devices and browsers
4) Address Color Scheme:
Assess the distinction and contrast of your website’s color scheme. Black background and white text is high contrast, while a pale blue background and white text is low contrast. People with visual disabilities or issues often rely on high contrast for reading digital content. Also, since visual perceptiveness and the ability to distinguish colors tend to diminish with age, a high color contrast is also beneficial for older visitors.
Did you know that 13 million Americans – and 350 million people globally – suffer from color blindness? Hence, it is important to avoid color combinations that may be hard on color blind people, such as:
- Green and Brown
- Green and Red
- Green and Blue
- Green and Black
- Green and Grey
- Light Green and Yellow
- Blue and Grey
- Blue and Purple
Final Word:
Now that you know these best practices, you can go about producing more inclusive and all-embracing content. Remember that enhancing the inclusivity of your content takes time, dedication, practice, and learning from your mistakes. Seek out feedback from your buyers and website visitors on how you can make your content more welcoming to and relatable for a wider range of audiences.
