Clear and Accessible Writing

By Multiple Authors

Multiple Authors February 15, 2024

Addgene was built on the concept of accessibility: making plasmids more accessible to scientists around the world. In 2004, that was a fairly simple goal… and we had no idea how much our understanding of what accessibility is would change over the next twenty years. But learn we did!

From Addgene's very beginning, we had to consider digital accessibility for our website and online resources. On the backend, our product and development teams have worked hard in increasing and improving accessibility on our website. As members of Addgene’s content team, we — Jo, Brook, and Angela — most often think about accessibility in terms of the content we write for our website and our blog. In fact, one of our team goals in 2023 was to increase accessibility to our website through the use of alt text to describe images in online spaces. Alt text is used by screen readers to provide visually impaired visitors with information about images that a sighted reader would glean from the image itself.

As we incorporated alt text into our work, we began to realize how the principles we used in our daily content writing applied to alt text. We also were aware of the need for clear, accessible writing in scientific writing, and how often the principles we developed to use in our website and educational content conflicted with plain language guidelines.

Which is why, at the Society for Neuroscience conference in November 2023, we hosted our very first professional development workshop, “Make a Greater Impact Using Clear and Accessible Scientific Writing.” In this post, we’d like to share parts of our workshop with you!

Accessibility

In order to explore accessibility, we first have to define it. There are many definitions, but for our purposes, we chose:

Accessibility: The intentional reduction of barriers.

In practice, accessibility is removing barriers when we can and lowering them when we can’t. We know barriers exist in scientific writing; when we asked the ~150 attendees at our workshop how they felt when they read papers outside their field, the answers were primarily negative. Stupid, overwhelmed, discouraged, tired…words that indicated there were many barriers between our audience and the information in the paper.

Of course, when you think about writing an entire scientific paper, you may feel it’s overwhelming or challenging. So instead, let’s focus on practicing with a short and accessible form of writing: alt text (pun intended.)

Steps to clear writing

Let’s use Figure 1 as our example. Remember, our goal is to use words to describe the image in a way that helps visually impaired readers receive the same information as sighted readers.

Alt text described in main body of text (sorry no spoilers!)

Figure 1: An image from AAV Purification by Iodixanol Gradient Ultracentrifugation

First, you’ll want to identify the reader’s goal. Why are they reading this page? What are they hoping to get from it? The image in Figure 1 appears on our protocol page for AAV Purification by Iodixanol Gradient Ultracentrifugation. The reader may be, for example, a graduate student using viral vectors for the first time and learning how to purify AAV.

Second, you’ll identify your purpose in using that image. Try using the questions: What is the goal, who is my audience, and what do I want to be different for them when I’m done? What are we trying to fundamentally change about their knowledge?

Here, this image is being used to convey the difference between a gradient tube before and after ultracentrifugation so that a scientist can extract virus from the correct layer.

Third, think about the venue you are using to present the image and information. Where is the reader accessing the information? This can be physical or digital. For instance, you would present information differently in a poster compared to an online abstract or Addgene blog post.

Here, we are presenting this image on a protocol page on our website, as an instructive step-by-step guide.

Finally, when writing your alt text, use all of this information to describe the image helpfully. You and your readers are now a team, working together to share information. Sometimes it is most helpful to use a lot of jargon and have a technical, detailed approach. Other times, it is more helpful to use plain language and focus on a broad takeaway.

In this image, we thought it would be most helpful to highlight the technical details of collecting the purified AAV–that the interfaces between layers are blurred after centrifugation and the syringe needle is inserted bevel-up at the interface between the 40% and 60% layers.

Putting them all together

Now that you’ve gone through this process, try writing your own alt text for the example image. We’ll wait!

Done? Excellent! We asked our workshop participants to do the same thing, and even though only about 10% of them had heard of alt text before, they all came up with excellent alt text for their practice image. We know; we asked each group to share with the rest of the workshop.

For Figure 1, Addgene chose this alt text: "The left panel is a profile photo of an iodixanol gradient after ultracentrifugation. The interfaces between layers are muddled due to the passage of supernatant through each layer. The right panel illustrates a gradient tube before and after ultracentrifugation. The viral supernatant migrates through increasingly dense layers until the macromolecule density is equal to the buoyant force of the solution. Contaminants of lower densities are captured at the 17%, 25%, and 60% layers, and genome-containing virions are captured at the 40% layer. To collect purified AAV, insert a syringe at the interface of the 40% layer containing the virus and 60% iodixanol layer, with the bevel pointed up. A syringe at the top of the tube allows air to enter the column so the virus will flow out the bottom syringe."

Feel free to share your alt text in the comments! We learned a lot from listening to others' alt text descriptions, and we’d love to hear yours as well.

More importantly, you can use these four steps for any type of writing. You can use them to help you write an entire manuscript, or you could use them to write alt text for any image you’re struggling to describe in the results. And many journals accept alt text, so you can submit it with your manuscript and help make your paper accessible to even more people.

Whether you start small with alt text or immediately dive into applying these four steps elsewhere, engaging in this practice, and perhaps modifying it as you learn more, will help your scientific writing across all platforms, from posters to papers.

We hope this helps, and happy writing!