Accessibility conversations tend to happen between designers and developers. Colour contrast, focus states, code. Fair enough. But writers type a large share of real Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) failures into existence in Word. That is months before a developer sees the page.
Here's what WCAG 2.2 asks of the words themselves. All of it is fixable at the draft stage, by you.
Headings that actually structure
Screen reader users navigate by heading levels the way sighted users skim. That breaks when a document jumps from H1 to H3, runs 2 H1s, or uses bold text pretending to be a heading. One H1, no skipped levels, real heading styles — it's an information architecture job, and it's yours. (WCAG 1.3.1, Info and Relationships.)
Links that say where they go
'Click here' and 'read more' fail twice. Screen reader users often pull up a page's links as a list, out of context — and a list of 11 'read more's is useless. Raw URLs are worse. They're read aloud character by character. Link text should describe the destination: 'apply for a concession card', not 'click here'. (WCAG 2.4.4, Link Purpose (In Context).)
Directions that don't need eyes
'See below', 'the menu on the right', 'the button in the top corner'. All of these assume the reader's page looks like yours. On a phone, read aloud, or navigated by keyboard, it doesn't. Name the thing instead of pointing at it. (WCAG 1.3.3, Sensory Characteristics.)
Acronyms, expanded once
Every acronym gets its full form on first use, with the short form in brackets — then use the short form freely. Readers new to your subject aren't locked out, and everyone else loses nothing. (WCAG 3.1.4, Abbreviations, Level AAA.)
Real lists, not typed ones
A paragraph starting with a typed hyphen looks like a list but isn't one. Assistive tech announces a real list — 'list, three items' — and reads a fake one as odd punctuation. Use the list button, not the hyphen key.
Two habits that help everyone
Avoid BLOCKS OF CAPITALS — harder for everyone to read, and some screen readers spell them out letter by letter. And keep working at the reading level. WCAG's Level AAA reading-level criterion sets a lower-secondary standard, and the Style Manual's year 7 target gets you there.
(Note: our heading capitals are a stylesheet choice - they’re still sentence case.)
Making it routine
None of this needs an audit. It needs a habit at the draft stage. We built the accessibility checks in Confetti for exactly that. While you write, it flags heading skips, vague link text, raw URLs, positional language, unexpanded acronyms and hand-typed lists. Each flag links to the WCAG 2.2 guidance it comes from. Free, in your browser. The colour contrast is still someone else's job. The words were always yours.
Photo by AI.