Back to it
It's only to my delight a colleague has asked me this week to assist with the conceptualization and scripting of an elearning page intended to make a strong point on what reading skills are required to read a web page.
It wasn't an immediate joy but following some casual brushing up on the subject I recognised the topic might be a 'missing link' from my work on visualizations but is something I can confidently advise on. I mean; the principles of Gestalt (see The Gestalt Therapy Page), the eye tracking blarny in Nielson's Use-it, and the 'science' of writing for the Web. How the cuss could I resist?
First, I discovered in conversation that we need to separate Web design from reading skills. Is that possible? Yes, it is. Web design is subordinate to reading. Reading skills define what Web design should be. However, they are related and sometimes their relationship sullies.
Unable to read – disabled?
Reading skills are not something all of our 'users' possess. What's the point in building up a Web design mythology around readability if any of the population in the UK employ different forms of literacy to the written English of Oxford and can't read so well in the first place?
There's a resurgence of my discomfort with traditional English literacy being used as a measure of intelligence; that Web design readability 'science' may indicate easy vocabulary and strong visual contrast but that we may still be occluding a part of our user population.
Of course, we are all striving for an inclusive or accessible Web but is the simple difficulty some of our users have with just reading really catered for? Do we focus on accessibility and miss readability? Are they one and the same? Is someone who finds reading difficult disabled?
Here are some disabilities listed by the W3C's How People with Disabilities Use the Web :
- visual disabilities
- blindness
- low vision
- colour blindness**
- hearing impairments
- deafness
- hard of hearing
- physical disabilities
- motor disabilities
- speech disabilities
- speech disabilities
- cognitive and neurological disabilities
- dyslexia and dyscalculia
- attention deficit disorder
- intellectual disabilities
- memory impairments
- mental health disabilities
- seizure disorders
- multiple disabilities
- aging-related conditions **No sic. I’m British
No. Not ONE entry for, “finds reading difficult”. Is this important?
Should the ability to read influence Web design?
Readability isn’t new. There’s stuff on the look of copy texts; its accessibility, and a responsibility shrug onto Web authors to keep it short and sweet but does it really account for those who simply (or more likely in a complex way) struggle to read?
I may knock around in the blog and conclude there’s nothing else we need to do other than look back to my original aims of replacing copy text with a visual literacy – or that we’re doing enough as an industry.
Then again, maybe there’s a point? Web page design and publishing of Web-based content isn’t confined to industry. Academia, small commercial outlets, clubs, and the normal public, etc. each has a slice of ownership in this. More so, in fact, where they are publishing for the entire World Wide Web’s population compared to corporations’ controlled / known populations facing another onslaught of eye lid closure over yet another compliance elearning module.
Perhaps we really should consider what reading is? What difficulties do the otherwise able have with reading? If we don’t bother perhaps we may perpetuate the disservice done to these people while distracted by our continual back-slapping over the improvements in accessibility?
As hinted above, this isn’t just for Web and instructional designers or ‘the Industry’. This is for you; the ordinary-person-on-the-street-publisher. You. Those of you that write blogs, newsletters, tweets, leaflets, posters, AND personal or small organisational websites.
Stuff I’m reading
- “There were over 35 million blogs worldwide in April 2006 and a new one is created every second. In the UK 45% use webpages and blogs as a means to publish their own original material, and over one in ten comment on current affairs and political issues on their homepages and weblogs.”
From OFCOM report The Communications Market 2007, Wikireadia, (2010) http://www.wikireadia.org.uk/index.php?title=Useful_reading_statistics
- “Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. It is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society."
From Wikipedia ‘ Literacy’, (2010) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy
- “Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of deriving meaning (reading comprehension) and/or constructing meaning. It is the mastery of basic cognitive processes to the point where they are automatic so that attention is freed for the analysis of meaning...other types of reading are not speech based writing systems, such as music notation or pictograms. The common link is the interpretation of symbols to extract the meaning from the visual notations.”
From Wikipedia, ‘Reading (process)’, (2010) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)
- “The United Kingdom has no official language. The dominant language, spoken as a first language by 95% of the population, is English…The United Kingdom's extremely high literacy rate (99%)…’
From Wikipedia, ‘Demography of the United Kingdom’, (2010) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Education
- ‘The United Kingdom has a literacy rate of 99%, with a Functional literacy rate of around 84%
Figures from the Literacy Trust UK.’
From Wikianswers, (2010) http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Literacy_rate_for_england
- ‘1 in 6 people in the UK struggle to read and write. Poor skills compromise health, confidence, happiness and employability.’
From The Literacy Trust, (2010) http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/about
Direction
Up to a 3rd of Army recruits are reported to have a reading ability less than a UK 11-year-old. I think that’s an indication of the failure of UK's education cycles. However, according to statistics in this early scan of the Web 15% of our population have no ‘functional literacy skills’.
Are these 15% disabled, speakers of a languages other than English, or ‘cognitively challenged’? Should we care about them?
Do our accessibility and readability measures cater for them?
How functional are functional literacy skills – what’s the measure – does this account for a reading age of over 11-years-old?
Okay. I’m looking for an argument. But it’s got to be worth while if I am to ever feel truly comfortable that I am not discriminating against someone who simply has difficulty with reading.
