Further Readability Guidelines project context, CAKE

Funding issues were cited by the intellectual property rights holders as the reason for stopping project development in early 2020. Later in the year, my overall content consultancy role with them finished too.

Previously I worked on their core internal offering, including contributions to their static website content and training workshop development, blog article and social media post content creation; plus content strategy work for 4 large scale external client projects – as well as the readability project.

It may be the case that since my input on it, no one else was found with the required skills to develop the readability wiki content further, including applying all the readability guidance to the content design, copy, IA and UX writing of the wiki itself.

In writing this I’m aware my last 2 sentences are way over the recommended 25 words maximum for easily readable sentences!

External recognition for the guidelines

The IP owners were keen to get formal recognition for the project. Someone on the WC3 Board reviewed ‘my’…? ‘their’…? wiki content, and told us informally it was ‘silver standard’. I was on the call.

One day an email arrived in my inbox from the IP holding company about the Digital Agenda Impact Awards. Could I write the pitch for the Readability Guidelines project entry?

I did write the pitch, and presented it in-person, solo, to the judges, with the company founder busy and the managing director having connectivity issues. The company won the Digital Agenda Impact Award 2020, Diversity category for the project.

For me I was keen that the project won an award too, as surely it would make getting this collaborative, for community benefit project funded easier? In fact, the award judges earnestly told me there was no reason for the company to self-fund, as there were many opportunities to get monetary support for the high standard, digital-with-alternative-format, tech for good project.

6 year development pause

In February 2020 momentum was really going well on the wiki. We were cohesive, and in full swing. Collaborators were starting to understand what was usability evidence (academic papers, published usability studies, formal standards that provided usability research sources) and what was not. For the first time a collaborator had not only written up topic discussion findings – most of the time I was left to pick through the hour’s worth of Slack comments – but to a standard that required only minor editing and light touch rewriting, rather than a full rewrite with a lot of deletions.

So it was a real shame the brakes were applied when they were, due to lack of funds.

I was actually approached by the company in mid-2020; post award-win they were thinking about restarting the project, after the 3 month gap. Which may not sound long, but given that the project was running on goodwill energy and considering the cadence and pace we had reached, this had already had a huge impact.

I replied to their meeting proposal to let them know what my terms for picking up the project again would be, these were that external funding would be found, so that there was no sudden stop again – and as a safeguarding measure so that wiki content would remain objective, with no conflict of interest. We were coming onto some very interesting topics around visuals and imagery, which many believe increase neurodivergent accessibility.

My terms were turned down, and instead I energetically continued with work for other clients, like the British Red Cross on the Voluntary and Community Sector Emergency Partnerships service manual (this was still 2020 after all!)

Obviously, the company eventually recovered from the impact of Covid, but the wiki which they asserted ownership of was left in limbo. With topic pages headed up and ready to go, but never filled out, abandoned like the Mary Celeste.

My paid role on the readability project

I was paid at my reduced charity rate for my input:

leading the readability research
coordinating global discussions
moderating the Slack community by myself – a community which grew from about 40 to over 700 during my time on the project
weeding out the substantial number of posts that cited informal and anecdotal commentary on our topics
reminding Slack community members of our principles
motivating Slack community members
writing social media posts
scheduling topics and contributors
writing up all our findings, from Alpha and Beta, consistently, concisely, accessibly – showcasing through my drafted guidelines not just content design principles but also the emerging good practice readability guidance
writing the supporting content on the wiki, including the homepage, the how to collaborate page, the top level findings, and the content design section
researching free wiki software
setting up the Beta myxwiki.org platform
designing the wiki IA
developing the wiki structure and content on its Beta platform
re-adding content to the wiki on its post-Beta and Live Contentful platform
discussing required functionality with the post-Beta and Live platform developer
formatting all the wiki content, on 2 consecutive platforms
updating all guidelines on the wiki to reflect findings from the latest discussion topics as we went along
writing regular blog posts about the project
providing regular updates internally on the project

Initially, as well as only charging my charity rate, I billed for just 50% of the hours I put in. However the unpaid time was later reimbursed.

I was offered royalties from Readability Guidelines printed handbook sales by the company founder but I refused them, saying credit for my work was enough, and requesting instead for my share of any royalties to be put back into the project, as it was always seen as a cost burden by the company and I wanted to try to future-proof it. I was repeatedly urged not to spend too much time on it – yet at the same time the quality of my work was highly praised. And something like that needs a high level of quality and precision.

Generating more savings

We used the free tier of Slack, and I was advised to limit members to 700. Later, inactive members were removed.

Myself and the independent developer brought in for the post-Beta, Live version of the wiki made the case to Contentful to get the community not-for-profit pricing tier for that hosting platform.

However, given that arrangement we were both a little surprised at the size of the company logo on the wiki, so much so that in fact the developer was concerned that might jeopardise our agreement with the platform host. Because it could have be interpreted as branded advertising for the company.

The book

Publishing a printed handbook of the guidelines was my idea. I instinctively knew it would be useful to have a physical resource to show subject experts and other stakeholders. In the time since publication many people have said how useful it’s been.

But the IP holders took some convincing. The initial print run was very tiny and apparently not good quality, which was the reason I was given for not being sent an author copy from it. I ended up ordering and paying for 2 copies myself from the company website! Later I was given some more copies. I still have a couple of extras. I may auction them off in future, donating proceeds to a literacy charity.

Author credit and recognition

In terms of reputational credit for my input, I now know that as the author I had a moral right to be publicly known as the author, despite having given up IP rights. Added to that, I’d shared with them my assumption that I’d be fully credited when I turned down book royalties. Despite this, my name wasn’t put on the print book cover or spine. It was on the flyleaf, and after the company founder’s name, who just wrote the 1 page introduction to it. I found this out only when my printed copy finally arrived. Another surprise!

Despite being the author of the wiki and book, and being offered royalties, I was never acknowledged for it. Everything stated the wiki was a collaborative project. Only the initial Alpha wikidot posts, the Slack channel comments, and the scheduled research discussions, were collaborative. A handful of people did “deep dive” research on a topic each in preparation for these discussions; I made sure they were named on the site and in the book.

Karin Tang was the only regular collaborator throughout Beta, post-Beta and Live, more than once only she and I were involved in the scheduled discussion of a topic. No one wrote copy that went live on the wiki other than me. In 2024 I got an edit made to the wiki site, citing me as the author.

Before learning about creatives’ moral rights – through later client work where by coincidence I content designed advice about creators’ rights – I asked the company in public posts to recognise my full contribution, and to reframe their input as project sponsors. That was ignored.

Flying completely solo, somewhat surprised

Beyond not being credited as the author, I cannot stress enough how much I was the only person connected to the company who was involved in the creation and development of the Beta and Live readability guidelines wiki content, including reviewing, and, if any points were carried over, rewriting, Alpha discussion suggestions.

Literally no one else from the company – directors, permanent employees or contractors, including consultant content design and strategy trainers – ever even commented or reacted in project Slack workspace or joined the scheduled discussions, except once or twice the founder. The company staff and associated consultants did not even check the published guidelines to apply them to their blog posts on the company website.

External interest in the project was generated through company social media posts, but I wrote those too. (I even got asked in addition to write, and did write, some social posts for their first Academy, as apparently take up was low close to the start date, and the freelance social person’s posts weren’t leading to conversions.)

After Alpha, the project was on the point of being shut down. In a meeting I put my hand up to take it on. No one else wanted to – another consultant contractor was encouraged to put their hand up too, ultimately he did not. But I had no idea taking it on, or leading on it, meant so holistically and comprehensively!

I was very surprised when I found I was repeatedly the only company member in the scheduled, live, but drop in, drop out, Slack discussions I regularly hosted.

Everyone else was joining voluntarily, and contributing to gathering research the guidelines were based on, in addition to their day jobs. But that was not possible for any of the core staff or satellite consultants with company website bios, from the company publicly getting kudos and praise for the project, whose logo dominated the wiki header and any social share previews for 7 years afterwards.

Archived blog posts

After I stopped working for the IP holders, all the blog posts I wrote on their company website about the readability wiki project progress were taken down, and replaced with a 1 liner stating I was a contractor who had led and supported the project as they did not have enough time.

They’ve still never publicly credited me for actually writing the guidelines.

Lizzie Bruce
Director, Founder, Cake Consultancy Ltd

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