Re: plain/simple/easy language variant subtag

> We don?t know how to do this today

I think we do know how to do a lot of it today.  When I view the challenge 
or problem in a two or three dimensional matrix, there is a lot I see we 
can delivery, or at least work on today: 

1. We have technologies that change the modality of the content from text 
to audio via TTS, voice recognition to auto create text captions, even 
experimental text to ASL avitars
2. We have device capabilities and formats with smart phones, tablets, 
desktop, various size displays and output devices including Refreshable 
Braille Displays.
3. We have experimental image recognition technologies and advanced OCR
4. We have visual/text presentational transformational technologies: line 
spacing, word and character spacing, color and contrast, font style, etc. 
in platforms, browsers, and plug-in and cloud delivered AT.
5. We have expermental summarization technologies
6. We have emerging translation (e.g. German to English) technologies
7. We have stable authoring/developer guidelines such as the 38 Success 
Criteria in  WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA. 
8. We have tablet based "AT like" unique solutions (apps) being delivered 
today to people with cognitive disabilities for things like rehab and job 
training.

so,
a. If you are narrowly referringto the space of taking any block of random 
text from the web and converting it into various levels of simplier blocks 
of text, we do have experimental summarization technology, so we have at 
least one level of transformation. 
b. We could invent a tag or attribute for marking up at least 6 levels of 
language comprehension if someone wanted to provide various level of the 
block of text by hand for further studies of effectiveness. 
c. I don't think we are ready to propose any new "Success Criteria" that 
would apply to "all" content.  But perhaps there is room for a new Level 
AAA Success Criteria, but I've not thought that through yet. 

There is other related work in this space, so it would be good to connect 
and not duplicate our precious resources:
        Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force
                http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/cognitive-a11y-tf/work-statement
        Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
                http://www.colemaninstitute.org/

we = IBM Research, browsers, platforms, University research programs, 
Coleman Institute, Google, Apple, Microsoft, AT vendors, etc. etc.

____________________________________________
Regards,
Phill Jenkins, 
IBM Accessibility