EP# 133 The Art of Accessible Content

"There are so many opportunities to make sure that every element of what we do is actually usable and accessible. And I don't mean just accessible in terms of being able to be accessed by screen readers and that sort of thing, but accessed and understood by the general public generally is a challenge." - Deborah Rice

On this weeks episode of GovComms, Deborah Rice, Content Strategy & Editorial Lead at Office of the eSafety Commissioner, chats with CEO and Founder of contentgroup, David Pembroke about the current climate of eSafety and the importance of creating usable and accessible content.

The pair begin by reflecting on Deborah's time at the ABC and what skills she has transferred to her role at the eSafety Commissioner.

In this episode the pair hone in on the modern best practise of having the subject matter expert, the technologist and the storyteller sit at the table together. Deborah explains that creating accessible, unique content cant be siloed but rather, the process needs to be a collaborative experience amongst various teams.

"What we did is brought together an office wide meeting where we actually look at the content production and design schedule. So we could ensure that everyone in the office knew what we were putting out. And there's also a column there for the marketing team and a column there for the media and communications team. So they've got line of sight right from the beginning on a resource."

This episode also touches on how traditional methods of communication may need to be adapted to reach a wider range of audiences.

"A lot of those things that you use as a communicator to make content warm and friendly and snackable can actually be problematic for low literacy audiences where there's ambiguity or where you are using idioms that might make it very familiar to a large part of your audience, but might actually exclude and in fact, misinform other people within your audience."

Discussed in this episode:

• Creating accessible and usable content
• The current climate of eSafety
• How to engage a broad spectrum of audiences

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