Unlock the full potential of your WordPress site by embracing accessibility! As the digital world grows, ensuring your website is inclusive for all, including the visually impaired, isn’t just a noble goal—it’s a necessity. Dive into the world of WordPress accessibility, where design meets inclusivity. Discover why it’s crucial, from enhancing user experience to boosting SEO. Ready to make your site universally welcoming? Let’s embark on this transformative journey together!
Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility products and services company, has added a new frontend highlighting feature to its free accessibility checker plugin, which is used to perform audits on self-hosted sites. The feature was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), through Equalize Digital’s consulting work on the new NASA websites.
Equalize Digital was contracted to perform accessibility testing, user testing with screen reader users, and provide accessibility governance recommendations.
“As part of the contract for those services, they also contracted us to develop this feature for the plugin,” Equalize Digital CEO Amber Hinds said. “They have an enterprise license but we decided in collaboration with them that we would make it a feature in the free plugin so everyone could benefit, not a paid-only feature.
“They were actually really interested in that because it’s part of their mission to give back to humanity.”
Prior to developing the frontend highlighting feature, the accessibility checker plugin only had reports inside the post edit screen, with output that is nearly indecipherable for less technical users who are not accustomed to reading HTML.
The new frontend highlighting feature makes the accessibility report’s output far more approachable for users who may not be developers. It puts a “view on page” link next to each issue found in the report, which brings users to the frontend where the element in question is highlighted with a dashed pink box. It also displays a panel that explains the issue in a way that is easier to understand as well as how to fix it.
The report in the admin has been updated as well so that it’s easier to read. A new image column displays any images related to issues and the Actions column includes a “View on Page” link leading to the issue highlighted on the frontend.
Hind said her team is working on making the tool more friendly to content creators and not just a development tool. The plugin will stay on the NASA website to help their team as they add and edit content over time.
“In the future, we’re planning to add the ability to jump to the element in the block editor as well,” Hinds said. “(That’s slightly tricky because we scan the whole page, not just the content area so we have to exclude elements created by other parts of the editor or theme.)”
“Our goal is to make accessibility testing easier for every WordPress user, not just developers,†Equalize Digital CEO Amber Hinds said. “Accessibility Checker was developed to include a robust free version with this in mind. We want to make building websites that work for people with disabilities standard practice and were excited to work with NASA to make accessibility testing reports easier for non-developers to understand and take action on. Adding this feature to the free plugin was a no-brainer for us. We’re looking forward to seeing more WordPress website owners finding and fixing accessibility problems on their websites.â€
The WP Community Collective (WPCC), a non-profit organization created to support individual WordPress contributors and community-led initiatives, has funded its first fellowship. Alex Stine, a fully blind individual contributor who has been working with the WordPress Accessibility team since 2016, is the first recipient of the funds designated for the fellowship.
WPCC reports that the fellowship received donations from 59 individuals and organizations that want to support the cause of improving the open source project’s accessibility. The organization uses Open Collective as the fiscal sponsor for its 501(c)3 status, enabling donations to be classified as charitable giving. All donations coming into the organization are transparent and publicly documented.
The fellowship provides Stine with five paid contribution hours per week for six months, which allows him to continue his work on accessibility reviews and patches in WordPress core. It includes a travel stipend for WordCamp US where Stine is volunteering as a co-organizer and participating in the Community Summit. As the first to embark on a WPCC fellowship, Stine will also help establish a framework for future Accessibility Fellowship cohorts.
“I am really excited for the future as this will allow me to commit real time to improving the project,” Stine said. “The support I received from the community shows me there are others who recognize the importance of accessibility.
“Time itself is the biggest win here. The funding allows me to focus more of my day on WordPress and less on side work. The main projects include the Gutenberg post editor.”
Stine recently conducted an accessibility audit of Gutenberg, which shows the current state of the block editor in WordPress 6.3. This video is very enlightening for anyone who hasn’t yet seen how Gutenberg works with assistive technology like a screen reader.
Stine has performed many accessibility audits for different products in the WordPress ecosystem. The fellowship funds enable him to continue his contributions on existing WordPress open source accessibility initiatives without having to take on as much consulting work.
Equalize Digital, a WordPress accessibility products and consulting company, has received an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding from Emilia Capital, the investment company owned by Joost de Valk and Marieke van de Rakt. The investment will be used to accelerate the growth of Equalize Digital’s Accessibility Checker plugin, a tool for auditing websites for WCAG, ADA, and Section 508 accessibility errors.
Emilia Capital now owns part of the company, although its owners were not given seats on the board. Equalize Digital founder and CEO Amber Hinds said they will be serving as advisors and playing a role in strategic planning, especially around marketing and plugin development.
The Accessibility Checker plugin currently has approximately 2,000 active installs, according to WordPress.org stats, and the commercial upgrades make up a small percentage of Equalize Digital’s current revenue.
“We built the initial MVP in 2020 with an SBA loan and since then the plugin has been bootstrapped by profits from the service side of our business,” Hinds said. “My partner Steve and I have been splitting our time between client work and working on the plugin.
“We decided to bring on an investor because our ultimate goal is for the product to make up a significant portion of our revenue. It’s challenging to rapidly grow a product that isn’t yet self-sustaining, hence seeking investors. The funds will allow us to have full-time team members building new features, and also further invest in marketing, education, and sales than was possible while we were bootstrapping.”
Hinds said the features her team is targeting are aimed at making the plugin a more competitive accessibility auditing tool when compared with other existing SaaS solutions.
“Our focus right now is making our reports easier to understand by less technical users,” Hinds said. “The next major release with be a feature that allows people to click a button and highlight elements on the front end of the website, which will make it easier to find the element flagging the issue without having to interpret a code snippet.
“Other features that we have on the road map include scanning and reporting on archive pages for posts and taxonomies, improved scanning of non-English sites, and the ability for accessibility testers to log issues found during manual accessibility audits.”
Hinds said she was encouraged by the findings in the recent Admin Bar survey of WordPress professionals, which showed that 76.9% report they are striving for best practices when it comes to website accessibility, a significant increase from the previous year. With the new investment, Equalize Digital will be able to do more marketing to increase awareness and adoption of its tools.
“Ultimately I would like to see accessibility being considered during website builds in the same way that SEO is, and we’re hoping that our plugin will central to that,” Hinds said. “It’s why the free version of our plugin is much more full-featured than similar plugins. Other accessibility tools are prohibitively expensive for small businesses and bloggers. We’re aiming to build a tool that makes accessibility testing available to everyone.”
WordPress Accessibility contributor Alex Stine – photo credit: The WP Community Collective
The WP Community Collective (WPCC), a newly formed nonprofit organization dedicated to funding individual WordPress contributors and community-led initiatives, has announced its first Accessibility Fellow. Alex Stine, a fully blind individual contributor who has been working with the WordPress Accessibility team since 2016, is the first recipient of the fellowship.
WPCC is managing its finances transparently on Open Collective. The fellowship has yet to be fully funded. Just $645.63 USD of $15,000 (4%) has been raised for the Accessibility Fellowship, although individual memberships are at $3,589.75 USD of the organization’s $20,000 goal.
“Monthly membership funds go to our general fund, which will primarily be used to support our fellowships and projects. As of today, we’ve raised slightly more than $4k, with $3,600 of that reserved for the Accessibility Fellowship.”
The organization is currently in the process of finalizing sponsorships from a few large companies and is building out a corporate sponsorship program and a small business sponsorship program.
“We can’t discuss anything yet as we’re still working out the details, but there is a lot happening that we hope to announce soon,” Reed said.
Once the Accessibility fellowship is funded, Stine will continue his work with WordPress’ Accessibility Team and will serve as the Team Rep, while continuing his private work as a consultant and an engineer at Waystar.
“I am excited to have the opportunity to give back to the project that provided me with my start in the technology field,” Stine said. “I could not continue to give back at my current capacity without this generous program. I will help ensure WordPress becomes more accessible, and I will fight to have the community as a whole adopt new principles that will ensure accessibility is the first thought, never the last.â€
What’s the Difference Between Alt Text and Image Title?
‘Alt text’ is short for ‘alternate text’ and is an attribute that is added to an HTML image tag. The text describes the image, so visitors who can’t see the image and search engine bots will understand what the image is about.
If an image on your WordPress website can’t be found or displayed for some reason, then the alt text will be shown instead, as you can see in the following screenshot.
Alt text is different from the image’s title. The title will be displayed in a small popup box when you bring your mouse cursor over the image.
Alt text and image titles are also used to improve the accessibility of your website for those with poor vision and who use screen reader devices to read your site’s content.
When the screen reader comes to an image, it will read the alt text. Depending on the user’s settings, it may also read the title text.
For both accessibility and search engine optimization (SEO), alt text is more important than title text. This is why we strongly recommend including alt text for all your images.
How to Add Alt Text to an Image in WordPress
WordPress allows you to easily add alt text to your images. You can do this from the block editor, the classic editor, or the WordPress Media Library.
Adding Alt Text in the Block Editor
Simply create a new post or page or edit an existing one, and add an Image block.
Now you need to upload your image or drag and drop it into the Image block. You can then set the alt text on the right-hand side of the page.
Adding Alt Text in the Classic Editor
If you’re still using the classic WordPress editor, then you can add image alt text when adding the image.
First, click on ‘Add Media’ above the posting box.
After that, you should either upload the image from your computer or click the ‘Media Library’ tab to view images you’ve already uploaded.
Next, click on the image you want in order to select it, and then type the alt text you want into the ‘Attachment Details’ of your image.
Adding Alt Text in the Media Library
You can also add alt text to an image by going to Media » Library and clicking on the image to edit it.
Remember, this won’t change the alt text for any instances of that image that you’ve already inserted into posts or pages. However, if you add the image to a post or page after adding alt text here, then the alt text will be included with it.
How to Add Image Titles in WordPress
It’s important to understand that there are two types of titles that you can add to your images.
First, there is the default image title WordPress uses internally to identify media files in the Media Library and attachments pages. Second, there is the HTML image title attribute added to images in your posts and pages.
Let’s take a look at how to add both types of titles.
Adding the WordPress Image Title in the Media Library
You can add WordPress media titles to your images using the Media Library. When you edit an image in the Media Library, you will see a ‘Title’ field.
This title is used by WordPress to identify the image. When you click the ‘View attachment page’ link at the bottom of the screen, you’ll see the title is used as the title on that page.
The WordPress media title isn’t necessary for image SEO or for users with screen readers. While it may be helpful in some cases, it’s not as useful as the image’s HTML title attribute. So how do you create that?
Pro Tip: Would you like to automatically use the WordPress media title as the image’s title attribute in your posts and pages? Take a look at the section below where we show you how to do this using All in One SEO Pro.
Adding an HTML Image Title Attribute in the Block Editor
It’s easy to add a title attribute in the block editor. Simply click the image and then click the down arrow next to ‘Advanced’ to show the advanced image options.
Now you can simply type the title in the ‘Title Attribute’ field.
Adding an HTML Image Title Attribute in the Classic Editor
Adding a title attribute using the old classic editor is similar. You can add the title attribute by clicking on an image and then clicking the pencil icon.
You’ll then see the ‘Image Details’ screen. To set the image title attribute, you need to click the little down arrow next to ‘Advanced Options’ at the bottom.
You can then set the image’s title attribute. Make sure you click the ‘Update’ button at the bottom of the screen when you’re done.
How to Automatically Set Alt Text and Image Titles Using AIOSEO
All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It will add a proper image sitemap and other SEO features to improve your SEO ranking. It also lets you automatically set your alt text and image titles, and more.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the All in One SEO plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin. To use the Image SEO feature, you will need the Plus plan or above.
Upon activation, the plugin will launch the setup wizard automatically. You can learn how to configure the plugin in our guide on how to set up All in One SEO correctly.
Now you need to navigate to All in One SEO » Search Appearance and then click on the ‘Image SEO’ tab. After that, you’ll have to click the ‘Activate Image SEO’ button to enable the premium image SEO features.
Setting Image Titles Using All in One SEO
Make sure that you are looking at the ‘Title’ tab of the Image SEO page. Here you can choose tags that will set the format used to automatically generate title attributes for your images.
For example, if you include the ‘+ Image Title’ tag, then each image in your posts and pages will automatically use the WordPress media title in the HTML title attribute.
You can also add other tags, such as your website title, to your image title attribute. All in One SEO can even strip punctuation from the title and change its capitalization.
Setting Alt Text Using All in One SEO
Next, you need to click the ‘Alt Tag’ tab on the AIOSEO’s Image SEO page. Here you can automatically format the alt text of your images.
By default, AIOSEO will simply use the image’s alt text. If you like, you can also add your website’s title and other information to the alt text of each image on your website.
Why Use Alt Text and Image Titles in WordPress?
We strongly recommend using alt text for all images. Here on WPBeginner, we also add a title to all images. However, this is less important than the alt text.
Alt text is important because Google focuses on it as a ranking factor for images. It is also used by screen readers to help visitors with impaired vision to fully engage with your content.
You should never just stuff keywords into alt and title tags. It’s important that you make them descriptive and helpful so that they’re useful for visitors who need them. You can use your keywords where relevant, but don’t overdo it.
For example, if you’re writing an article about the best WordPress hosting, then your target keyword could be “best WordPress hosting”.
You might also have a screenshot in your article showing users how to set up an account with a popular web host like Bluehost. Let’s take a look at some good and bad examples of alt text for that image:
“Account setup” is not very descriptive and also doesn’t include anything related to your keyword.
“Best WordPress hosting, WordPress hosting, best web hosting for WordPress” doesn’t describe the image and is stuffed with keywords.
“Setting up a WordPress hosting account” is much better as it’s descriptive and uses part of the keyword in a natural and appropriate way.
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You might have been hearing more and more about it in the last few years: inclusive language. But what do people mean by it exactly? Is it a new thing? And why should you think about it when writing web copy? Find the answer to all of these questions in this post. We’ll do some myth-busting too!
Inclusive language
First things first: What is inclusive language? Inclusive language is language that avoids terms that might exclude marginalized groups of people. Typically these are terms that perpetuate prejudice, stigma, or erasure. Inclusive language favors alternatives over these terms that are less likely to be experienced as harmful or exclusionary. At the same time, these alternatives aim to keep the intended meaning.
Advocates of inclusive language generally strive for a more inclusive society. Language is an important aspect of society and it’s known to have the power to normalize ideas or beliefs. Therefore avoiding terms that imply sexist, racist, ableist, or otherwise biased ideas, can make more people feel genuinely part of society.
Some examples of inclusive alternatives
As this may sound complicated, let’s show some examples to demonstrate how this works.
Firemen vs firefighters
Take a look at this example:
” What happened? I saw all these firemen passing by!”
The word firemen generates a male or masculine image of the word in your mind. However, firefighters don’t have to be men. So, unless you’re referring to a group of male firefighters specifically, a better and more accurate alternative would be firefighters. A better sentence here would be:
” What happened? I saw all these firefighters passing by!”
By using this word in the right context you’re making sure all firefighters, whatever their gender, feel addressed, seen, or heard.
Inclusive language is context and language-specific
Inclusive language is a nuanced subject. What is or isn’t inclusive can depend on the context of the word. Some words are derogatory on all occasions; other words’ appropriateness can depend on the way they are used in a sentence.
For instance, in English using the word seniors when referring to older people is considered non-inclusive, while seniors when referring to children in high school is considered perfectly fine. At the same time, in Dutch, the word senioren (the literal translation of seniors) is actually considered more appropriate than oudere mensen (literal translation of older people). So what’s inclusive or not can really differ per context and per language.
Why write inclusive web copy?
So why would you write more inclusive content for the web? Well, when you’re creating content for your website you probably want as many people as possible to see, read and enjoy it. If you want people to feel seen and heard in your content it’s not only ethical but also smart to avoid certain words and phrases. By writing more inclusively you can give more people a better user experience as you’re making your content more accessible and relatable. That in itself is already a great reason to write more inclusively.
But it has more advantages. Creating inclusive content allows you to broaden your audience: it’s more likely people will engage with, link to, or share your content if they feel like you’ve written it for them. Which, in turn, is great for SEO, not to mention conversion. In fact, Google’s John Mueller stated on Twitter that they value and promote writing more inclusively as well. And as he says: “You might not get it right all the time but taking steps to get better matters too.”
Let’s conclude this post by debunking some myths that exist around the inclusive language phenomenon.
(Non-)inclusive language doesn’t have any real-life effects
Language has the power to influence how we think about something. It can normalize certain ideas or beliefs. If an idea is encoded through language and we hear it repeated over and over again, it gets normalized. Particularly if it’s part of standard or mainstream language! Non-inclusive language can also function as microaggressions. If you’d like to learn how this works, read this article about the power of everyday language.
So inclusive language affects real life AND vice versa. The more places that are safe for marginalized people appear in real life, the more these values reflect in how we communicate with each other.
Inclusive language is a new invention
The topic of inclusive language has been quite popular lately, this may make it seem like it’s a new invention. However, language has always been connected to social and cultural norms. It reflects them, and can also play a role in spreading them. When norms change, so does language. And when people try to challenge harmful ideas, they often also challenge the use of language that reflects and normalizes them.
For example, feminist activists of the 1960s and 70s were challenging the use of words like ‘he’ and ‘man’ to refer to humans in general. This was part of their fight to increase the visibility and status of women. You can read more about this here and here.
It is arbitrarily decided what language is inclusive
Society is always changing and evolving, and so is our understanding of it. This means that with time, we can realize that language that at one point was seen as inclusive, is not so inclusive after all.
An example of advice that has evolved is the use of handicapped vs special needs vs disabled. It used to be common to use the term special needs to replace the non-inclusive term handicapped. But conversations around disability have evolved into including disabled people. Therefore, inclusive language advocates now recommend using the word disabled instead.
These changes can happen fast, which may seem like there are constantly new ‘rules’ about what language is inclusive and what isn’t. And it may even feel like people can’t make up their minds about what language they want you to use, and make up new rules just to make your life harder.
However, this is not true – when there is any significant pushback against certain words or phrases, it is usually for a good reason. The reason may not be obvious at first, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And of course, it doesn’t mean that people always get it right – as mentioned earlier, our idea of what is and isn’t inclusive is always evolving. But the point is that more often than not people have specific reasons for advocating for or against certain language, even if sometimes their reasoning ends up being misguided.
The Yoast help articles on inclusive language can serve as useful explanations of why certain words and phrases are targeted by our inclusive language check.
You should feel bad for using non-inclusive language
It’s not a nice feeling to realize that the language you’ve been using might be harmful to other people. But we have all done it, and even the most dedicated people still make mistakes and are learning. As mentioned, our understanding of what is and isn’t inclusive can evolve quite fast, so naturally, we will be making mistakes along the way. It doesn’t make you a bad person if you have (unintentionally) used language that is not inclusive. In the first section of this article on Medium the writer does a good job of explaining this.
Inclusive language is language that makes everyone happy
Making everyone happy is impossible. Inclusive language is about avoiding language that harms certain groups of people, for example through stereotyping or erasing them. Some people may even be unhappy when they see inclusive language being used. For example, people who hold transphobic views may feel unhappy when they see trans-inclusive language being used. However, inclusive language doesn’t harm anyone, even if it can make some people unhappy by challenging their (harmful) beliefs. In fact, challenging harmful beliefs is part of what makes inclusive language inclusive.
Inclusive language is language that doesn’t offend anyone
Non-inclusive language is often offensive to people, however not all language that offends people is non-inclusive. Being offended is a subjective feeling – people can get offended by different things. For example, a person who expresses racist views may be offended if someone calls them racist. This doesn’t mean that calling racist behavior racist is not inclusive. There is a difference between language that causes personal offense and language that causes harm. Inclusive language is about avoiding the latter.
How to write more inclusively
So now you know what it is (and isn’t) and why you should use it. But how to make sure your content is inclusive? There are many guides on the internet on how to write more inclusive. So you might feel overwhelmed and not 100% up to date on best practices regarding inclusive language. We understand! It can be difficult because you might not be aware of potentially harmful words. Even when you are, you’d also need to know the alternatives! Also, as we explained, guidelines might change and that’s hard to keep up with.
Fortunately, Yoast can help you with an easy solution if you create content on WordPress or Shopify. It’s our Inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO. It will check your copy for non-inclusive terms. These checks are developed by our in-house linguists, in cooperation with Maxwell Hope from the University of Delaware. The analysis will highlight the words that could be non-inclusive and will also provide alternatives. Check out how it works in this screenshot:
Example of a check in the inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO
It checks for problematic terms in the following categories: Age, appearance, race, culture, ethnicity, disability, neurodiversity, gender and socio-economic status. Here you’ll find an overview of these categories. It’s opt-in, so you can switch it on if you care about this topic and want to make great content for everyone!
If you own a blog or a business, SEO is probably important to you. Then you also know that Google cares a lot about user experience. But there’s one aspect of user experience that’s often overlooked: inclusive language.
But why should you care?
Creating inclusive content is good for your users and your SEO. On the other hand, if you use language that isn’t inclusive, you can exclude people and reinforce systemic biases. Yikes, right? In short, your users definitely value inclusive language, but the big question is: Does Google care?
What is inclusive language?
Before we dive deeper into the topic, let’s look at what inclusive language means. Inclusive language aims to use words that don’t express or imply ideas that are derogatory or excluding towards marginalized groups. For example, using a racist or misogynistic slur.
Just like accessibility, inclusive language makes everyone feel welcome on your website. If you use non-inclusive words, you’re likely to exclude part of your audience. And in a worst-case scenario, you may even offend people. This, of course, can cause them to quickly leave your site and never come back, which is bad for your SEO and your business.
How could inclusive language affect your ranking?
As you know, Google and other search engines’ goal is to provide people with the best result for their query. That’s why, with a few exceptions, it’s usually not great if users leave your website quickly and never return — for example, if they feel excluded by your content, then they will think it’s not for them.
So, why is this bad? Well, Google sees these behavioral patterns and uses them to figure out how people are experiencing your site. If a number of people leave quickly, Google may think they haven’t found what they’re looking for. Meaning: Your site isn’t useful for the query you’re trying to rank for. As a result, your website’s ranking can decrease.
On the other hand, if your content is available to more people because you use inclusive language, the chances of people sharing your posts and linking to them will increase. Just think about it: If you write a funny post about “Things firemen do that just make sense“, you’re only referring to firefighters who are men. Which means only people who don’t notice or ignore that other genders weren’t included will share your post. You might think: So what? But you could be excluding a lot of people, and missing out on a lot of engagement. However, if you write “Things firefighters do that just make sense“, more people will read and share your post. So by taking advantage of our inclusive language analysis you open up your content to more people. Which in turn means more people can relate to it, like it, engage with it, share it, and link to it. Which is obviously great for your SEO!
Google cares about inclusive language
We are not the only ones that believe that inclusive language is important. Let’s see what Google says. On their website, they have the following statement: “Everyone should be able to access and enjoy the web. We’re committed to making that a reality.†In other words: Google cares about its users, and they also care about inclusive language. Recently, they also tweeted about inclusive language confirming this:
If you write anything for SEO […] please watch out for inclusive language. It doesn’t take much work, and you might not get it right all the time, but taking steps to get better matters too.
John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google
Stand out from the crowd
As with accessibility, inclusive language is widely overlooked by other websites and businesses. Did you know that a whopping 98% of websites in the United States aren’t built with accessibility in mind? That’s a ridiculous amount!
You’ll be one step ahead of the competition if you ensure your website is available to everyone. Plus, it sends a message to your audience that you value them. This could lead to great word-of-mouth advertising because you’re one of the few who actually focuses on inclusive language. Of course, more advertising can lead to more visitors, which can lead to more shares and likes, and… you get it. We firmly believe that using inclusive language is great for your SEO and can actually improve your rankings.
Inclusive language analysis
What is and isn’t inclusive can be hard to figure out. Especially since language is constantly evolving. Keeping up with all the changes can be very time-consuming, but we have good news: You don’t have to figure out how to write inclusive content all by yourself. Yoast SEO now has an inclusive language analysis, developed and maintained by linguists.
So, what does the analysis do? This new feature works similarly to our other analyses by giving you real-time feedback on your text with the use of traffic lights. It scans your text (and also looks at context), then highlights words or phrases that might not be inclusive. It also gives you an alternative word to use, so you don’t have to spend time searching for one. Easy, right?
Point to remember! This feature is opt-in! So, it will be turned off by default. This feature is available in our free and premium plugin, read more about the inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO.
In conclusion
As a business owner, inclusive language may not be part of your business goals. Especially in terms of SEO. However, inclusive language can have a positive impact on your SEO and your users’ experience. You’re less likely to offend anyone, and more likely to include everyone. As a result, more people feel engaged, so your content is more likely to be read and shared. That means your audience grows, which can also boost your rankings. Plus, you’ll be one step ahead of the competition.
Earlier this year, we added a new feature to our Premium plugin, the inclusive language analysis. Now we’re excited to say that we’re bringing it to Yoast SEO Free as well. Why? Because we believe that using inclusive language is essential in making the web a better place.
Taking a stance
We believe that inclusive language is so important that we wanted to make sure that everyone (who wants to) can use this feature. Not only does it make you less likely to exclude people and alienate them with your content, but it’s also becoming more important in SEO every day. If you want to take advantage of this new feature, head to your features settings in Yoast SEO to turn it on. This will also be available in Yoast SEO for Shopify later this week.
Does inclusive language matter for SEO?
You might be wondering why we added a check for inclusive language in Yoast SEO, a product focused on improving your SEO. Using inclusive language helps you reach a wider audience and avoid alienating potential customers. It aims to create content that’s accessible and understandable to as many people as possible. This leads to more people returning to your website, sharing your content, and even buying what you’re selling.
It simply helps you to write content that doesn’t exclude people. Content that doesn’t alienate or even offend a portion of your audience. Which, especially as a business owner (or website owner), you don’t want to do. And that can happen easily without you even realizing it. Google also points out the importance of using inclusive language in your content. You can learn more about this in our post about inclusive language and SEO.
The inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO
This new feature works pretty similarly to our other analyses by giving you real-time feedback on your text with the use of traffic lights. Here is an example of what it looks like when in use:
The inclusive language analysis in Yoast SEO
It’s up to you whether you activate the analysis
It’s good to know that the inclusive language analysis is opt-in, so it won’t be activated by default. It’s up to you whether you want to get feedback on the inclusiveness of your content. You can activate it by going to Yoast SEO > General > Features and toggling the inclusive language analysis switch. If you choose not to use this feature, the SEO and readability analyses won’t change.
Activate this feature ve language analysis in Yoast SEO > General > Features
We strongly suggest using it as it can benefit your SEO and helps you make your content relatable for a bigger audience. The goal of inclusive language is to avoid excluding or alienating people. So, this new analysis helps you create content that everyone can enjoy and that’s less likely to offend anyone!
Other improvements and fixes
Of course, we’ve also worked on improvements for our SEO plugins. For instance, we’ve improved the subheading distribution assessment to make it easier to find those overlong paragraphs. Now, hit the eye icon to highlight the subheading where the piece of text appears. Very helpful when working on long articles! The same assessment also keeps an eye on your intro and warns you if you start your article with an overly long introduction.
Quickly find overly long pieces of text
We’ve improved our Integrations page, making it clearer which WordPress plugins hook into our Schema API. This means that the structured data output by these plugins will be neatly tied into the graph Yoast SEO generates for the site. Together, this forms a very comprehensive Schema solution. We urge other plugin developers to come on board — check out our Schema documentation!
Improved admin bar menu
Today, we’re cleaning up the admin bar menu and expanding the range of options. If you are a Yoast SEO Premium user, you can open up the front-end SEO inspector instantly to check the SEO settings of the page you are currently on. You’ll also find the focus keyphrase you set for this page and the overall readability and SEO scores in the famous colored dots. Plus, you can find quick links that let you send the page to be analyzed by external tools, like Google’s Rich Results Test or PageSpeed Insights. Of course, you also access the Yoast SEO settings from there.
Updated admin bar menu in Yoast SEO 19.12
Of course, there’s more. We’ve added a new Website name text field in the Site representation step of the First-time configuration. You can also set this in the Search Appearance section of the settings.
We’ve also worked on improving compatibility with PHP 8.2. In addition, we now ask users to update to a recent version of PHP, as we are dropping support for PHP < 7.2 starting March 1st, 2023.
Enjoy these Yoast SEO updates
In this release, we’ve added support for our inclusive language analyses to our free Yoast SEO version. Try it out and see if you can write more inclusive content that will help you reach a broader audience.
WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras, CTO of the France-based Whodunit agency, has released two new accessibility plugins in cooperation with Guillaume Turpin, another developer on the Whodunit team. These are small “micro” plugins developed to fill gaps in the block editor’s accessible content creation experience.
The first plugin is called Lang Attribute for the Block Editor and is important for content that is written in multiple languages. It allows content creators to indicate language changes using the lang attribute so that those using assistive technologies will get the correct presentation and pronunciation rules for the specified language. This plugin helps WordPress sites meet the requirements of the WCAG Success Criterion 3.1.2 “Language of Parts.”
video source: Jb Audras
With the plugin installed, content creators can highlight text and then find the language attribute in the block toolbar to edit it.
“It’s worth noting that indicating language changes in content is mandatory for WCAG compliance, and there is currently no way to do that in the Block Editor (except by editing the code manually),” Audras said when introducing the plugin on Twitter. “I think this feature should be implemented natively into Gutenberg.”
The WCAG identify a few types of visitors who may be helped by the Abbreviations, including those who have difficulty decoding words, those who rely on screen magnifiers, have a limited memory, and those who have difficulty using context to aid understanding.
video source: Jb Audras
The abbreviation tag can also be found in the block toolbar, so users can highlight any text for which they want to provide the expanded form of the abbreviation.
Both the Abbreviation Button and the Language Attribute plugins are available for free in the WordPress plugins directory. The plugins’ creators hope that some of this functionality can eventually be added to the block editor, but in the meantime users can install the plugins to create more accessible content that meets accessibility guidelines.
