Reading Level
- Christina Lutz-Hatfield
Table of Contents
Overview
Content should be written as clearly and simply as possible to:
ensure that additional content is available to aid the understanding of difficult or complex text
establish a testable measure indicating when such additional content is required.
This helps people with reading disabilities while also allowing authors to publish difficult or complex Web content. Text difficulty is described in terms of the level of education required to read the text.
Difficult or complex text may be appropriate for most members of the intended audience (that is, most of the people for whom the content has been created).
But there are people with disabilities, including reading disabilities, even among highly educated users with specialized knowledge of the subject matter. It may be possible to accommodate these users by making the text more readable.
If the text cannot be made more readable, then supplemental content is needed. Supplemental content is required when text demands reading ability more advanced than the lower secondary education level—that is, more than nine years of school. Such text presents severe obstacles to people with reading disabilities and is considered difficult even for people without disabilities who have completed upper secondary education.
Reading disabilities such as dyslexia make it difficult to recognize written or printed words and associate them with the correct sounds. This is called "decoding" the text. Decoding must be automatic in order for people to read fluently. The act of decoding text word by word consumes much of the mental energy that most people are able to use for understanding what they read. Text that uses short, common words and short sentences is easier to decode and usually requires less advanced reading ability than text that uses long sentences and long or unfamiliar words.
The education level required to read text content (also called "readability") is measured by analyzing selected passages of text from the Web page. If the Web page includes text written for different purposes or different styles are used, the selected passages include samples of the types of content in the Web page and the different styles in which the content is written. (In many cases, the Web page contains only one kind of text content—e.g., technical documentation, a legal notice, marketing material, etc.—and all the content uses the same style.)
5th Grade Reading Level
Provide vital information for the public at a 5th grade level.
In cases where technical or legal language is necessary, you must provide a summary at a 5th grade level.
Vital information is defined by the City's Language Access Ordinance. See Definitions section for more details.
Tools and Resources
Hemingway App: Reviews reading level of written content and provides suggestions.
Guide on writing content for screen reader users.
The City’s Language Access Ordinance