{"id":6807,"date":"2021-01-25T21:15:52","date_gmt":"2021-01-26T02:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/?p=6807"},"modified":"2021-01-26T08:55:38","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T13:55:38","slug":"lower-literacy-users-writing-for-a-broad-consumer-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/2021\/01\/25\/lower-literacy-users-writing-for-a-broad-consumer-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"Lower-Literacy Users: Writing for a Broad Consumer Audience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/author\/jakob-nielsen\/\">Jakob Nielsen<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>on&nbsp;March 13, 2005<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/topic\/accessibility\/\">Accessibility<\/a>,&nbsp;<\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/topic\/writing-web\/\">Writing for the Web<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Nielson Norman Group<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Summary:<\/strong>&nbsp;Lower-literacy users exhibit very different reading behaviors than higher-literacy users: they plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Lower-Literacy Users: Characteristics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Lower literacy is different than illiteracy<\/strong>: people with lower literacy can read, but they have difficulties doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The most notable difference between lower- and higher-literacy users is that lower-literacy users can&#8217;t understand a text by glancing at it. They must&nbsp;<strong>read word for word&nbsp;<\/strong>and often spend considerable time trying to understand multi-syllabic words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lower-literacy users focus exclusively on each word and slowly move their eyes across each line of text. In other words, they&nbsp;<strong>&#8220;plow&#8221; the text<\/strong>, line by line. This gives them a&nbsp;<strong>narrow field of view&nbsp;<\/strong>and they therefore miss objects outside the main flow of the text they&#8217;re reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unlike higher-literacy users,&nbsp;<strong>lower-literacy users don&#8217;t scan text<\/strong>. As a result, for example, they can&#8217;t quickly glance at a list of navigation options to select the one they want. They must read each word in each option carefully. Their only other choice is to&nbsp;<strong>completely skip over&nbsp;<\/strong>large amounts of information, which they often do when things become too complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lower-literacy users tend to&nbsp;<strong>satisfice&nbsp;<\/strong>\u2014 accept something as &#8220;good enough&#8221; \u2014 based on very little information because digging deeper requires too much reading, which is both challenging and time consuming. As soon as text becomes too dense, lower-literacy users start skipping, usually looking for the next link. In doing so, they often overlook important information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In addition, having to&nbsp;<strong>scroll&nbsp;<\/strong>breaks lower-literacy users&#8217; visual concentration because they can&#8217;t use scanning to find the place they left off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally,&nbsp;<strong>search&nbsp;<\/strong>creates problems for lower-literacy users for two reasons. First, they often have difficulty spelling the query terms. Second, they have difficulty processing search results, which typically show weird, out-of-context snippets of text. As a result, lower-literacy users often simply pick the first hit on the list, even if it&#8217;s not the most appropriate for their needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Improving Usability for Lower-Literacy Users<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The main and most obvious advice is to simplify the text: use text aimed at a&nbsp;<strong>6th grade reading level&nbsp;<\/strong>on the homepage, important category pages, and landing pages. On other pages, use text geared to an&nbsp;<strong>8th grade reading level<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can also improve your site&#8217;s usability for lower-literacy users in several other ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Prioritize information<\/strong>. Place the main point at the very top of the page, where even readers who typically give up after a few lines will see it. Place any other important information above the fold, to minimize the risk of users losing their place after scrolling. This is always good practice; even the most skilled readers will leave a page if the first few paragraphs don&#8217;t seem valuable. It&#8217;s even better to avoid scrolling all together (which also helps&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/usability-of-websites-for-teenagers\/\">teenagers<\/a>) unless eliminating it requires you to chop content into unnaturally short sections, which can be even more confusing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Avoid text that moves or changes<\/strong>, such as animations and fly-out menus. Static text is easier to read. This guideline also helps international users (who might need to look up words in a dictionary) and users with motor skills impairments (who have difficulty catching things that move).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Streamline the page design<\/strong>. Place important content in a single main column, so users don&#8217;t have to scan the page and pick out design elements in a two-dimensional layout. This guideline also helps low-vision users and users of handheld devices (such as smartphones), which narrow the field of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Simplify navigation<\/strong>&nbsp;by placing the main choices in a linear menu. This helps users clearly understand the next place to go, without requiring them to scan the page for options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Optimize search<\/strong>. Make your search tolerant of misspellings (which also helps&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/usability-for-senior-citizens\/\">seniors<\/a>, who are particularly prone to making typos). Ideally, a user&#8217;s first search hit should answer the query, and all hits should provide short, easy-to-read summaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How Big Is the Lower-Literacy Population?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>According to the U.S. Department of Education&#8217;s&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/nces.ed.gov\/naal\/\">National Assessment of Adult Literacy<\/a>,&nbsp;<strong>43% of the U.S. population has low literacy<\/strong>. (Literacy levels are roughly the same in other advanced countries, though slightly higher in Scandinavia.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For obvious reasons, Web design is concerned only with Web users, and not the population at large. Generally, people with lower-literacy tend to use the Internet less than people with higher-literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Based on the available information about Internet participation at different education levels, I estimate that&nbsp;<strong>30% of Web users have low literacy<\/strong>. Because most of the higher-literacy population is already online, however, future growth in Internet usage will mainly come from adding lower-literacy users. Thus, in five years or so, lower-literacy users will probably be 40% of Web users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Who Should Care about Lower-Literacy Users?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Long experience shows that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/beyond-accessibility-treating-users-with-disabilities-as-people\/\">improving usability for users with disabilities<\/a>&nbsp;typically increases usability for non-disabled users as well. Similarly, improving websites for lower-literacy users can also help higher-literacy users. That said, some sites are targeted mainly at higher-literacy users:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/b2b-usability\/\">B2B sites<\/a>&nbsp;that target business professionals, managers, and decision-makers<\/li><li>E-commerce sites that sell expensive or intellectual products<\/li><li>The&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/press-area-usability\/\">public relations<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/investor-relations-ir\/\">investor relations<\/a>&nbsp;areas of corporate sites<\/li><li>Content sites that cover scientific or other advanced topics<\/li><li>Intranets for knowledge workers<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>My own Alertbox column contains B2B content aimed at business professionals and executives who recognize usability&#8217;s importance. I usually write it at a 13th grade reading level, which is not only far too difficult for lower-literacy users, but too complicated for the mainstream B2C audience. Given my readership, this readability level is acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, sites that&nbsp;<strong>target a broader audience&nbsp;<\/strong>must make lower-literacy users a priority. Such sites include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Government sites, especially those for senior citizens or the unemployed<\/li><li>Health sites<\/li><li>Companies that sell mass-market products<\/li><li>HR info and benefits applications on intranets for companies with many blue-collar workers<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>[There&#8217;s also a case-study on pharmaceutical literacy and changing the literacy level]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong>https:\/\/www.nngroup.com\/articles\/writing-for-lower-literacy-users\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thinking about leveling the literacy level. The article talks about how some companies aim for high-literacy users, but some cases such as health literacy benefit both low and high-literacy users. (Why isn&#8217;t this a thing already!) Jakob also goes into some VC guidelines that could help low-literacy users that don&#8217;t have to do with the actual verbiage. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Jakob Nielsen on&nbsp;March 13, 2005 Accessibility,&nbsp; Writing for the Web Nielson Norman Group Summary:&nbsp;Lower-literacy users exhibit very different reading behaviors than higher-literacy users: they plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view. Lower-Literacy Users: Characteristics Lower literacy is different than illiteracy: people with lower [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":6976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6807","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-focus"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6807"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6977,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6807\/revisions\/6977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}