If You Want to Talk About Accessibility, We Need to Talk About Readability
As developers, we spend a lot of time thinking about web accessibility. We diligently add alt tags to our images, make sure our sites can be navigated by keyboard, and use ARIA roles to aid screen readers. And that‘s all incredibly important work.
But there‘s one critical component of accessibility that often gets overlooked in the dev world: readability. You can build a site with perfect semantic markup and keyboard navigation. But if the actual content on that site is not readable and understandable by your audience, the site is not truly accessible.
The Sad State of Reading on the Web
Consider these sobering statistics on adult literacy:
- 43% of adults in the U.S. read at or below a basic level
- Only 12% of adults are proficient readers
- The average American reads at a 7th-8th grade level
Source: National Center for Education Statistics
When you factor in the large segment of web users for whom English is not their native language, the percentage of the world‘s internet users who struggle with reading comprehension is staggering.
Yet the vast majority of websites are written at a 10th grade level or higher. We‘re talking about supposedly consumer-facing content like this gem from a credit card terms of service:
"APR for Purchases and Balance Transfers: A variable rate equal to the Prime Rate plus a margin of 12.99%, 17.99% or 22.99%, based on your creditworthiness."
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level for this single sentence? 20.5 – graduate school territory! How can we expect the average user to parse this impenetrable wall of jargon?
The High Costs of Low Readability
The costs of unreadable web content are very real:
- Sites with low readability have bounce rates up to 85% higher than those with plain language (source: Nielsen Norman Group)
- Unclear instructions lead to 27% of customer service calls (source: Forrester Research)
- Poor communication costs businesses with 100 employees an average of $420,000 per year (source: SHRM)
As a developer, these numbers should alarm you. When users can‘t understand the content on your meticulously-coded site, they‘re much more likely to hit the back button in frustration. And that means all your hard accessibility work was for naught.
But the implications go beyond bounce rates. When important information like medical instructions, legal notices, and financial details are presented in an unreadable format, it puts users at serious risk. Readability is not just a UX concern – it‘s an ethical one.
Quantifying Readability with Automated Tools
So how do you know if your content is readable? As with many aspects of accessibility, there are automated tools that can help.
The most widely-used are the Flesch Reading Ease score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, which I mentioned earlier. These formulas, which were developed in the 1940s, use factors like sentence length and syllable count to assess the reading difficulty of a text.
Here‘s how the scoring breaks down for the Flesch Reading Ease test:
| Score | School Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 100.0–90.0 | 5th grade | Very easy to read. Easily understood by an average 11-year-old student. |
| 90.0–80.0 | 6th grade | Easy to read. Conversational English for consumers. |
| 80.0–70.0 | 7th grade | Fairly easy to read. |
| 70.0–60.0 | 8th & 9th grade | Plain English. Easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students. |
| 60.0–50.0 | 10th to 12th grade | Fairly difficult to read. |
| 50.0–30.0 | College | Difficult to read. |
| 30.0–0.0 | College graduate | Very difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates. |
Source: Wikipedia
The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formula translates the 0-100 score to a U.S. grade level, making it even easier to judge the readability of a text at a glance.
While these formulas have their limitations (they don‘t directly account for factors like vocabulary level or content coherence), they‘re a good starting point for assessing readability. Many word processing programs, including Microsoft Word, will calculate these scores for you. There are also numerous free online tools, like Readable and WebFX‘s Readability Test Tool.
Real-World Readability: The Good and the Bad
Some industries are taking readability seriously. The U.S. government, for instance, has mandated that many agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the IRS, write public content at a 6th-8th grade reading level. Websites like Healthcare.gov and CDC.gov do a good job of presenting complex information in a highly readable way.
In the tech world, companies like MailChimp have made readability a core part of their content strategy. The MailChimp content style guide explicitly states:
We aim to write at a 7th grade reading level. We use short words and sentences, and we avoid jargon.
Source: MailChimp Content Style Guide
But for every readability success story, there are a dozen failures. Take a look at this paragraph from PayPal‘s user agreement:
"You may not use the Generalized Micropayment Markup Language (GMML) to create a payment button that contains any of the following information: (a) payment amount; (b) identity or email address of the payment recipient; (c) number of payments to be made; or (d) PayPal-hosted URL that contains any of the foregoing or other information related to the payment."
With a grade level of 19.5, this passage is virtually indecipherable to the average PayPal user. The dense legalese and undefined jargon terms like "Generalized Micropayment Markup Language" make it impossible for a layperson to understand their rights and obligations.
Tactics for Improving Readability in Code
As developers, we have a responsibility to present content in a way that is easy for our users to understand. Here are some specific tactics you can employ in your code to boost readability:
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Use string manipulation to dynamically adjust content based on user data. For instance, you could have different versions of instructional text that gets served based on the user‘s self-reported experience level.
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Build readability scores into your CMS. When content authors are drafting new posts or pages, have your CMS automatically run the text through a readability analyzer and display the scores. Set firm readability targets and don‘t let authors publish until they hit them.
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Auto-generate definitions for complex terms. If your content management system has a glossary feature, use it to automatically link jargon terms to plain-language definitions. No more inscrutable acronyms!
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Progressively reveal complexity. Start with the simplest possible explanation of a concept, then add more detail as the user progresses or clicks a "learn more" link. This keeps the initial cognitive load low while still providing comprehensive information for those who want it.
The Business Case for Plain Language
If the ethical argument for readability doesn‘t sway your boss or client, try appealing to their bottom line. The business benefits of using plain language on the web are extensively documented:
- After the US Federal Communications Commission rewrote some of their website content in plain language, they saw a 140% jump in visits to those pages.
- When General Electric revamped the navigation and content of their appliance site to be more user-friendly, they saw a 250% increase in conversion rates.
- One study found that for every $1 spent on making documents clearer, businesses gained $3 to $5 in productivity and savings.
Sources: PLAIN, Nielsen Norman Group
The fact is, readability is good for business. When users can easily find, understand, and act on the information on your site, they‘re much more likely to stick around, make a purchase, and recommend you to others.
The Future Is Readable
As the web continues to evolve, readability is only going to become more important. With the rise of voice interfaces and virtual assistants, more and more users will be consuming content aurally. And if your content is not written in a clear, conversational style, it‘s going to sound even more confusing when read aloud by Siri or Alexa.
Plus, as global internet access continues to expand, a growing proportion of your users will be reading in a second language. If your content isn‘t highly readable for native speakers, it will be downright impossible for ESL users to comprehend.
As developers, we have to start treating readability as a first-class accessibility concern. It‘s not enough to just slap an "Aa" badge on our sites and call it a day. We need to actively work with our content teams to ensure that every word on every page is as clear and comprehensible as possible.
Yes, this can be a daunting task, especially for large, content-heavy sites. But the payoff – in terms of user experience, conversions, and brand loyalty – is immense. And from an ethical standpoint, it‘s simply the right thing to do.
So let‘s commit to putting readability at the top of our accessibility checklist. Let‘s leverage the power of plain language to build a web that is truly inclusive and empowering for all users. Because at the end of the day, what good is an accessible site if no one can understand it?