Common Mistakes in Easy Reading: How to Improve Your Text's Accessibility

You can write a genuinely good idea and still lose your reader, not because the thinking is weak but because the text itself puts up barriers. Accessibility mistakes hide inside otherwise fine writing — in the shape of a sentence, the spacing of a paragraph, the choice of a word. They are easy to make and, once you can spot them, easy to fix. This is a hands-on look at the specific text-level errors that make reading harder than it should be, with a concrete correction for each so you can improve your own writing today.

Want expert help putting this into practice? EasyReading can guide you through it.

Cramming too much into one sentence

The most frequent accessibility mistake happens at the sentence level. A sentence that carries three or four ideas, linked by commas and conjunctions, forces the reader to hold everything open until the end before it resolves. For readers with dyslexia, working-memory limits, or simply a tired brain, that load breaks comprehension.

The fix is to enforce roughly one idea per sentence. Take a sentence like "The report, which was published last year and drew on data from several sources, argued that costs would rise, though it acknowledged uncertainty." Break it apart: "The report was published last year and drew on several sources. It argued that costs would rise. It also acknowledged the uncertainty." Same content, far less strain. When you draft, watch for sentences that make you take a breath mid-way — those are candidates to split.

Choosing hard words when easy ones exist

Related: Easyreading - Expert Advice for Better Comprehension.

Every uncommon word is a tiny obstacle, and writers plant them without noticing, often to sound more authoritative. But "commence" is not clearer than "start," and "in order to" is just a longer "to." These choices accumulate into a text that feels effortful for no gain in meaning.

• Prefer the short, common word unless a technical term is genuinely more precise.
• Replace wordy phrases with single words: "due to the fact that" becomes "because."
• Define any specialist term the first time you use it, in plain language.
• Cut filler that adds length without meaning — "actually," "basically," "in essence."

Simplifying vocabulary is not condescension. It is removing tolls the reader gains nothing from paying, and it makes your genuinely important points land harder. A reader who is not spending energy decoding a needlessly fancy word has that energy left over to actually think about what you are saying, which is the whole point of writing it down.

Neglecting the visual shape of the text

Accessibility lives in typography as much as in words. A page of tightly packed text with tiny fonts and long lines is hard to read regardless of how clear the writing is, because the eye physically struggles to track it.

Give the text room. Keep paragraphs short — three or four sentences — so the reader gets frequent visual rest. Ensure a comfortable font size and generous line spacing. Keep line length moderate, since very long lines make the eye lose its place on the return sweep. And maintain strong contrast between text and background; the fashionable light-grey-on-white looks refined and reads badly, especially for anyone with reduced vision. These are small settings with outsized effects on how easy a text feels.

Building walls instead of paths

See also: Easyreading - Complete Guide to Simplified Reading.

A long piece with no internal structure asks the reader to hold the whole thing in their head and find their own way through. That is a heavy demand, and many readers simply refuse it. The mistake is treating structure as optional decoration rather than as navigation.

Break longer text into sections with clear, descriptive headings that tell the reader exactly what each part covers. Use lists for anything that is a sequence or a set of items, so the eye can process them as discrete units rather than a run-on sentence. Add the occasional bolded phrase to mark what matters most. Signpost transitions with words like "however" and "for example" so the reader always knows how one idea relates to the next. You are laying down a path so the reader never has to wonder where they are.

Forgetting the technical accessibility layer

Some accessibility mistakes are invisible to sighted readers but shut others out entirely. If your text lives online, these details determine whether people using assistive technology can read it at all.

• Give every meaningful image alt text that describes what it communicates, not just "image."
• Write descriptive link text — "read the accessibility guide" rather than "click here" — so links make sense out of context.
• Use real headings in order rather than just large bold text, so screen readers can build a navigable outline.
• Never rely on color alone to convey meaning; pair it with text or symbols.

These fixes take minutes and can be the difference between a text that reaches everyone and one that quietly excludes a portion of your audience.

Assuming clear-to-you means clear-to-everyone

The deepest mistake underlies all the others: judging your own text as a reader who already knows what it means. You cannot un-know your intent, so you cannot feel where a stranger stumbles. Writers who skip an outside check keep shipping the same blind spots indefinitely.

Build a short verification habit. Read the piece aloud and mark every place you trip — each stumble is a real reader's stumble made audible. Leave the draft overnight so you meet it with fresher eyes. Best of all, give it to someone outside your topic and simply watch where they slow down, reread, or ask "what does this mean?" Their hesitation is precise, honest feedback that no amount of self-editing can replace.

Improving a text's accessibility is rarely about a dramatic rewrite. It is about catching a dozen small frictions — a bloated sentence, a fancy word, a cramped paragraph, a missing heading — and smoothing each one. Publications like EasyReading treat these fixes as the baseline of respectful writing rather than an extra, and any writer can adopt the same eye. Run your next piece through these checks, and watch how much further a clear text travels than a clever one.