Reading effectiveness level - SMOG

I found an interesting tool today [1].  It asks you to select 30 sentences 
from your document (I chose WCAG 1.0) and count how many words with 3 
syllables or more are in those 30 sentences.  Then it asks several other 
questions, including several about presentation of the information.

Based on my input to their form, WCAG 1.0 is about grade 16 and WCAG 2.0 is 
about 13.  Per their definitions, grades 10-15 are college.  So, this 
implies that someone needs beyond a college education to understand WCAG 
1.0. and must be halfway through college to understand WCAG 2.0<grin/>

This is based on the Simple Measure Of Gobbledegook (SMOG) readability 
formula.

--wendy

http://www.eastendliteracy.on.ca/clearlanguageanddesign/readingeffectiveness 
tool/


--
wendy a chisholm
world wide web consortium
web accessibility initiative
seattle, wa usa
tel: +1 206.706.5263
/--

Received on Friday, 1 June 2001 22:42:18 UTC