To ensure all the text content within my app is easy for users to understand, I wanted to research what language is best for neurodivergent people.

I started by reading the book below, which covers how communication methods suggested for neurodivergent people can, in fact, make for better communication for everyone. The tips include keeping communication clear, avoiding idioms or ambiguous language, removing filler words and keeping instructions short and manageable. Including these tips as part of my brand’s tone of voice will ensure my product is as usable by as many people as possible.

I also found very useful guides online on how to optimise language across a wide range of products (websites, presentations, PDFs, etc.) for neurodiverse people, including autistic people. As my product is designed for potentially autistic people and those likely to be neurodivergent, these guides provide key ways I can make my product accessible and therefore usable for my target audience.

This guide https://leedsautismaim.org.uk/resources/guide-to-making-information-accessible-for-neurodivergent-people/ is particularly useful to me and covers not just tone of voice but also design considerations.

W3C, which created the WCAG guidelines have also produced an additional document around making content usable for people with cognitive and learning disabilities including neurodivergence, which will also provide key areas for me to concentrate on when crafting my content. https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/

A key question I needed to answer around my brand’s tone of voice was whether to use identity-first, for example autistic person, or person-first, for example, a person with Autism. Surveys of autistic people have shown a preference for identity-first language, and this is the approach all of the leading autism charities, such as the National Autistic Society, now take. Based on this information, I will use identity-first language across my product and any other brand artefacts.

The final key part of my brand’s tone of voice is to select where on the linguistic register it should fall. As my product may contain medical information and items that I cannot control the language of, it is important not to allow the rest of my content to become too informal. In saying this, I also do not believe it would be in the best interests of users if my content’s tone were too formal. I therefore need to strike a balance between formality and informality so that users don’t get an overly medical impression from my brand but can also trust the accuracy and reliability of the information I provide. Based on this website (https://textinspector.com/linguistic-register-and-language-register/), I believe the correct approach for my brand would be to use a consultative register. While communication is not direct, there is an element of communication between users and my brand. Therefore, the consultative register with its professional tone is the right balance for my brand.

I will use all of the information I have now found and decided upon to write the tone of voice section within my brand guidelines.