Category: We Heart Health Literacy

Today, dear readers, we want to tell you about a documentary that has some of us at We ❤︎ Health Literacy Headquarters talking. Unrest chronicles filmmaker Jennifer Brea’s experience with a complex and confusing illness: myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS.

Through her own story and the stories of others living with ME/CFS, Brea offers a sensitive, honest look at the inherent challenges of the disease — as well as the accompanying struggles that have nothing to do with ME/CFS itself.

Unrest explores the medical community’s lack of understanding about ME/CFS and the implications of that for people living with the disease. Before being diagnosed, Brea was repeatedly disbelieved by doctors or told that her illness was “all in her head” — something that’s unfortunately very common for people with ME/CFS (and perhaps especially for women).

The film also highlights how people with disabilities or chronic illnesses are using the internet to connect with each other, to find the answers their doctors are unable to provide, and to organize and advocate for themselves.

We talk a lot in these posts about the best ways to communicate health information. In Unrest, Brea chronicles the harm that can result when patients, families, and doctors don’t even have the information — and how empowering it is when people are able to connect and share knowledge. For us as health communicators, it’s an important reminder of why we do what we do.

The bottom line: Unrest is a powerful documentary that offers a window into the experience of living with a mysterious chronic illness. Watch it on PBS (until January 23) or Netflix.

The internet has given us so much: Grumpy Cat, Baby Monkey, and — a recent fave — NPR’s accidental #Ramona phenomenon.

But there’s another reason we’ve been appreciating the web so much lately, dear readers. It offers a ton of options for getting people to pay attention to and engage with health information in new ways. Yep, we’re talking about interactivity.

Unlike static graphics or tables (which, as their name implies, just sit there), interactive graphics and tools do more than just show content or data. They let users make choices about what they see and, often, how they see it.

Interactive elements can give your users the power to:

• Display data in a way that answers their questions — like with this data visualization on progress toward Healthy People 2020 objectives
• See both big-picture trends and specific details — like with these Kaiser Family Foundation maps on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid enrollment
• Dive deeper if they want more information — like with this graphic from the healthIT.gov Patient Engagement Playbook

But before your design team starts learning the latest animation software, make sure that an interactive format is a good fit for what you’re trying to communicate. For example, if you have a very simple message, you may want to consider a static graphic that packs a punch.

And if you decide to go the interactive route, check out Health Literacy Online — a resource we ❤︎ that has guidance for designing intuitive interactive graphics and tools.

The bottom line: Take advantage of the web by using interactivity to engage users and tell them what they want to know.

The holidays are upon us, dear readers. Festive sights, sounds, and smells abound, and we hope you’re enjoying the season as much as we are. To that end, we wanted to bring you a special holiday treat!

Here’s the deal: Our darling Betti the Plain Language Yeti is on a quest for the Gift of Plain Language, and it’s up to you and your plain language know-how to help her! Using your keyboard, follow the path and choose plain language words to get to the center of the maze. And keep an eye out for some of our Doodle friends — following directions isn’t really their strength…

The bottom line: Warm wishes and holiday cheer to you and yours from all of us at CommunicateHealth!

Is your team lost in the product development process? Do you want to see how someone else might envision this thing you’re making? Maybe you’re interested in getting at the je ne sais quoi of a successful product? Never fear, dear readers! Our latest installment on testing techniques is about “design the box,” a research activity that asks participants to decorate a physical box representing a (digital or tangible) product.

The goal of design the box is for participants to capture the product’s most important qualities and visually represent how they could be displayed — and how they might interact with each other. Folks can do this by writing words on the box, gluing magazine pictures to it, or any other crafty approach they please.

To prepare, you’ll need to gather supplies — including, of course, boxes (shoeboxes work great). You’ll also want to provide things like markers, scissors, tape, magazines…you get the idea. Then divide participants into teams. We find that teams of 3 to 6 people work well, but if you have fewer people, you can also have people work in pairs.

Now it’s time for participants to channel their creativity! Ask them to imagine that the box is the package for the product in question — and their job is to design it in a way that helps sell the product. For example, if you’re working on a new app for tracking physical activity, you can tell participants to think about things like:

• Who is the app designed for?
• What’s important to that audience?
• What will make them want to buy and use the app?
• What makes this app different from other, similar apps?

Give teams a set amount of time to design their box — say, 30 minutes — and ask them to prepare some talking points about why they designed the box the way they did. When time’s up, have each group present their creation. Then facilitate a sure-to-be enlightening discussion about participants’ choices and their vision for the product.

Keep in mind that participants can be either internal stakeholders or end users of the future product. Each of these groups represents a unique perspective. If you can, do 2 separate sessions with both types of participants!

The bottom line: Design the box taps into creativity, collaboration, and fresh perspectives for product development. It might just be exactly what your research process needs.

Here at We ❤︎ Health Literacy Headquarters, we always have accessibility in mind — but on this day each year we think about it with a little extra love. That’s because it’s Blue Beanie Day, a worldwide celebration of the importance of web design that makes content accessible to and usable for people with a diverse range of needs. (Hooray!)

As you may know, dear readers, we’ve shared accessibility tips before — on topics like alt text and labeling, designing for keyboard navigation, and accessibility plug-ins. This week, we’d like to draw your attention (get it?) to color contrast.

Color contrast is the difference in color between elements on a page. Things with low contrast (for example, dark blue text on a black background) can be hard to see. Using text with high contrast (like black text on a white background) makes your content easier for everyone to read — and it’s especially important for people with low vision.

So, how much contrast is enough? We recommend using Section 508 guidelines. Check out these tools to make sure your site passes high-contrast muster:

• Not sure if your color contrast is kosher? Try out this nifty Firefox plug-in.
• Working from an existing palette? Use this color palette builder to find 508-compliant color pairs.
• Got a base color? Use COLOR SAFE to find high-contrast matches.
• Starting from scratch? Check out these color-safe combinations.

The bottom line: On Blue Beanie Day (and every day!), a quick color check goes a long way toward making health information as accessible as it can be.

As longtime We ❤︎ Health Literacy readers know, all content is not created equal. Some words, phrases, or ideas are usually more important than others. So how can you draw attention to your high-priority content?

Designers have all kinds of fancy tricks up their (super-fashionable) sleeves. But today we’d like to focus on bolding, a simple visual cue that you can use to emphasize any content — no designer needed.

Bold text is easy to read, and it really stands out on a page. Done right, it can help people find and understand your key ideas and messages — especially readers who are skimming or scanning.

We use bold text for most of our emphasizing needs, including:

• Highlighting the topic of a bullet or paragraph, so readers who skim can quickly see what the section is about
• Calling attention to a particular word, especially if we’re teaching a key word they might see again
• Underscoring key takeaways — 1 or 2 sentences max!

Why do we like bold best? Because it’s head and shoulders above the alternatives:

• ALL CAPS can be hard to read — AND IT LOOKS LIKE YELLING! No thank you.
• Underlining also isn’t great for readability. And, in our digital world, users can easily mistake it for a hyperlink. Next, please.
• Italics can be hard to read for users with lower literacy levels, so we mostly avoid them in plain language materials. For savvier audiences (like you, dear readers), we use ’em sometimes — mostly to stress a single word or to indicate a book title or foreign phrase.

Remember, when you’re bolding, a little goes a long way. It can be tempting to just bold everything — but trust us, it’s not a good look. If everything is emphasized, nothing stands out. And patchy bolding is especially confusing — readers often don’t know where to look, and they can end up feeling googly eyed, woozy, and disoriented.

The bottom line: Bold text draws your readers’ eyes to key messages and ideas. Use it wisely!

It’s time for yet another installment in our “use simpler words” series. This week’s target: “transmit.”

Why? Because this verb sounds like it’s straight out of a sci-fi novel or ham radio how-to. And the related noun, “transmission,” is more hot rod than Hot Zone.

Consider these examples:

• The flu can be transmitted easily from one person to another.
• Mothers who take HIV medicine while they’re pregnant can lower the risk of mother-to-child HIV transmission.

Holy jargon, Batman! All this fancy fuss, dear readers, when we could use a plain language word like “spread” or “pass.”

Try these instead:

• The flu can spread easily from one person to another.
• Mothers who take HIV medicine while they’re pregnant are less likely to pass HIV to their babies.

The bottom line: When writing about infectious diseases, skip “transmit” and use “spread” or “pass” instead! (When writing about radios, aliens, or cars, it’s up to you.)

Tweet about it: #PlainLanguage PSA from @CommunicateHlth: When writing about how diseases spread, skip “transmit” — your audiences will thank you: https://bit.ly/2ExWD1t #HealthLit #communicateCOVID