Re: Do we like this better? - was way to move forward with plain language

While perhaps better, this also still leaves a few questions open...see 
https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2017AprJun/0676.html

P

On 22/05/2017 14:37, Gregg C Vanderheiden wrote:
> Alastair makes a good point
> 
> 
> Unless there is an automated tool — (a web crawler that can detect all 
> the navigation elements and test them) This would take forever.   but I 
> think it’s doable if there’s some group that wants to put up the funds 
> to make it happen.
> 
> If we do this, we will need to recognize that many sites will still have 
> navigation with complex words. If the most common word is complex word, 
>   it would still pass. But I think this is okay. That means that sites 
> with unnecessarily complicated navigation words would use more common 
> words. And sites that are talking about complex topics would still be 
> able to use appropriate words. That is, a site selling laboratory 
> equipment could use proper technical terms to describe the categories of 
> equipment etc.
> 
> It would be a perfect fit to Albert Einstein’s advice
> 
>     “ everything should be is made as simple as possible, and no simpler"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> /g/
> 
> Gregg C Vanderheiden
> greggvan@umd.edu <mailto:greggvan@umd.edu>
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On May 22, 2017, at 9:06 AM, lisa.seeman <lisa.seeman@zoho.com 
>> <mailto:lisa.seeman@zoho.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Would we all be more comfortable if we just had
>>
>> "Provide words or phrases  or abbreviations that are the most-common 
>> form to refer to the concept "
>>
>>
>> Use of word frequency lists and core vocabularies could then be 
>> techniques.
>>
>> This is harder to test.  The manual way to test it might be to look at 
>> a thesaurus and see if any of the words that mean the same thing and 
>>  are more common.
>>
>> MS and IBM have tools that can test for the most common word. MS 
>> review tools are available with a subscription to their cloud. (i am 
>> not sure if this is true in all languages) but I can reach out to them 
>> and ask if we like this direct.
>>
>>
>>
>> All the best
>>
>> Lisa Seeman
>>
>> LinkedIn <http://il.linkedin.com/in/lisaseeman/>, Twitter 
>> <https://twitter.com/SeemanLisa>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---- On Wed, 17 May 2017 11:31:08 +0300 *Alastair 
>> Campbell<acampbell@nomensa.com <mailto:acampbell@nomensa.com>>* wrote 
>> ----
>>
>>     Jason wrote:
>>
>>     > As mentioned, I’m still thinking through the implications and the
>>     feasibility here, but we do need to look beyond conventional
>>     approaches to defining and evaluating content requirements if we
>>     are to take some issues (especially but not only cognitive ones)
>>     into account in an authentic and effective way.
>>
>>
>>     Indeed, I have long maintained [1] that where improving
>>     accessibility crosses over into usability, you need to apply a
>>     certain process rather than guidelines. Most of the work my
>>     company does is apply user-centred-design, i.e. UX services for
>>     clients.
>>
>>
>>     Taking an example relevant to plain language (i.e. using 1500
>>     common words), if you want to ensure a usable navigation menu for
>>     a content-oriented website then I would want to follow a
>>     particular process such as:
>>
>>     -Open card sorting to establish how your audience think about the
>>     groupings of content and what grouping terms they associate with
>>     the content [2].
>>
>>     -Create a navigation that seems to work for that content & mental
>>     model based on the results.
>>
>>     -Closed card sorting (often with larger numbers) to refine and
>>     prove it works [3]. You can put then percentages on how well each
>>     term & content grouping works, and refine until it is optimised
>>     enough.
>>
>>
>>     The two points I’d make are:
>>
>>     1.There is no guideline that can help you predict the outcome of
>>     what a ‘usable’ navigation will be, it is based on content,
>>     context and audience. Every time in the last 16 years we have run
>>     the above process we massively improve a navigation that was
>>     created without it. Provably.
>>
>>     2.Arbitrarily using words from a common list it likely to make it
>>     less usable for the majority of the audience and cost
>>     organisations money.
>>
>>
>>     Take the navigation of an ecommerce store for example:
>>     https://www.johnlewis.com/ <https://www.johnlewis.com/>  I think
>>     there are more than 1500 words in the navigation! Also, it has (I
>>     assume) been finely honed over the years to maximise the usability
>>     for their customers.
>>
>>
>>     There is no reasonable argument to say that restricting their
>>     navigation to an arbitrary 1500 words is going to improve the
>>     experience for anyone. You could argue the interface should be
>>     simplified (e.g. like the small screen version) so less is
>>     presented at once, but many of the terms are objects or categories
>>     of things you can buy with specific names you can’t change.
>>
>>
>>     If they were asking my advice, I could not in good conscience tell
>>     them to restrict their navigation terms to the top 1500 words, it
>>     would cost them a lot of money for zero improvement for anyone.
>>
>>
>>     On the other hand, usability testing (with anyone but especially
>>     people with cognitive issues) or using the card-sorting process
>>     above would hugely improve most navigations for everyone, and with
>>     less political resistance (in an organisation) because they see
>>     the improvements first hand.
>>
>>
>>     For me this is something that needs to be dealt with in Silver,
>>     and a key part of Silver needs to be dealing with the **process**
>>     of making sites usable, as well as accessible. Ideally drawing on
>>     (or referring to) the ISO standards for user-centred-design and
>>     highlighting aspect particularly relevant for cognitive (and
>>     other) disabilities.
>>
>>
>>     In the meantime, can we move this one to the Cognitive TF note
>>     going out next to 2.1?
>>
>>
>>     Kind regards,
>>
>>
>>     -Alastair
>>
>>
>>     1]
>>     https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2015JulSep/0037.html
>>     <https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2015JulSep/0037.html>
>>
>>
>>     2]
>>     https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/card-sorting.html
>>     <https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/card-sorting.html>
>>
>>
>>     3] https://www.optimalworkshop.com/treejack
>>
>>
>>
>>
> 


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Patrick H. Lauke

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Received on Monday, 22 May 2017 13:44:27 UTC