Introduction
With access to CoPilot we are all using more AI generated content to help us to work more efficiently. This can be an excellent tool for web content creation, but it is important to make sure that still following accessibility rules when you add the generated text to your web page or article.
When generating content for our websites it is important to consider our writing style and tone of voice. More information is available on our How we write step by step guide.
Emojis
We do not allow the use of emoji’s on our pages or news articles. AI often inserts them into the text, so it is important to remove them before publishing your page or article.
There are many reasons why someone might not understand the meaning of an emoji. Different ones are used for different purposes in different cultures, and across different age groups. Some groups might find an emoji offensive, while another group might use the same one for a positive message.
Another reason we do not allow the use of emoji’s is that assistive technology tools cannot always read them out correctly and it can make the sentence hard to understand.
Em dashes
AI generated content often includes ’em dashes’, which are a long horizontal dash about the width of an m (which is where they got the name). They are often inserted with no spaces between the words and the dash.
We do not allow the use of em dashes on our web content, so please remove them before publishing. We do allow the use of the similar ‘en dash’, which can be added to your text by typing Alt+0150. Please use a space either side of the en dash when you use them.
There is more information on our Grammar and Punctuation page.
Why it matters
With more and more AI generated content flooding the web it is important to make sure that we are using it thoughtfully. From a web accessibility point of view the most important thing is that all customers can read and understand the text, whether or not they are using assistive technology. It is also important that we are consistent about our approach as an organisation across all services.