- From: Al Gilman <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
- Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2001 21:19:08 -0500
- To: <w3c-wai-gl@w3.org>
The difficulty with incorporating reading-level checking in what we are doing is that reading-level checking makes sense as a _process requirement_, a required activity in the content development process; but there is no single tool or threshold that makes sense as a _product requirement_ for all web content. Our document model is biting us. This includes the idea that we are producing a WCAG which is a set of product requirements on the content as retained at the server and/or delivered from the server. A pragmatic recipe for web content quality would be allowed to include process requirements as well as product requirements. "Check the reading level of your writing" is a verifiable checkpoint. It is just verifiable in the system logs, not in the data coming from the server. The product requirements for reading level should indeed float, as people have pointed out. How to get help from the IRS in preparing your tax return is a topic that has to be explained in very accessible language. A doctoral dissertation in Physics should still be written as simply as possible, but it may be appropriate to assume a lot more knowledge among the readers than one can get away with in general writing. Both of these will be more successful in clear writing if they use reading-level measures as a checking tool. Al
Received on Tuesday, 13 March 2001 20:58:14 UTC