Re: proposed change for simple words in labels etc.

> Simple, clear, and common words: Use the the most common 1500 words or phrases or, provide words, phrases or abbreviations that are the are most-common form to refer to the concept in the current context.



This is a very interesting definition.  By adding context — it makes content self adjust.   For example — a physics site could have physics terms on it - which would clearly not be plain language. 

My only concern as an author would be that several key things are not defined.

1)  what does “current context” mean.      If my website is the current context — it means everything passes because those are the terms in my context.    If the context is ‘science websites’  then I do not know what the most common terms are for them — nor do I know what the definition of ‘science website’ is.   (That is — if you define current context as being X context  then  X needs to be defined — and I need to know what the common words are for that context. 

2) the most common 1500 words includes lots of prepositions, and articles  (Most or all of them)  but only a small percentage of nouns.    Very hard to write a website with only the most common 1500 words.    (I did word frequency studies in my earlier years)      


I think the approach is clever — but still leads to an untestable SC since there is no way for the author  (or for testers) to know what “current context” means.         (and you can’t write WCAG with the most common 1500 words) 


Gregg C Vanderheiden
greggvan@umd.edu



> On Feb 19, 2017, at 3:33 AM, lisa.seeman <lisa.seeman@zoho.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Folks
> 
> Continuing the conversation on simple language, to address concern with testability (as user testing is not acceptable)  I want to suggest the following change to the clause on common words:
> 
> Change:
> Simple, clear, and common words: Use words or phrases that are most-frequently used for the current context, unless it will result in a loss of meaning or clarity. This includes not using abbreviations, words, or phrases, unless they are the common form to refer to concepts for beginners. Where word frequencies are known for the context, they can be used.
> 
> to:
> 
> Simple, clear, and common words: Use the the most common 1500 words or phrases or, provide words, phrases or abbreviations that are the are most-common form to refer to the concept in the current context.
> 
> 
> The scope is instructions, labels, navigational elements, and error messages which require a response to continue.
> 
>  Technique would include: 
> Using a title tag to provide a simple language equivalent
> Using the coga-easylang attribute (prefered)
> Providing extra text via personalization semantics.
> Using simple words
> Technology support includes: word frequency generator for a given context, (reads the URI's list and generates a word frequency list), existing word frequency lists, checker to test that words are in the most 
> 
> There are also a list of exceptions that is quite long - issues 30 - and we are proposing to add a exception for long instructions (as per previous email) We could add an exception for user testing, but amazingly that is controversial. 
> 
> The thinking is: the most common 1500 words is really trivial for testing tools to find and generate a warning. However using the most comment form to refer to something in the current context will, in this scope , take care of  the clarity issue and is also  testable with the tools above. 
> 
> please do not bring up issues that are addressed in the exceptions or are out of the scope.
> 
>   
> 
> All the best
> 
> Lisa Seeman
> 
> LinkedIn <http://il.linkedin.com/in/lisaseeman/>, Twitter <https://twitter.com/SeemanLisa>
> 
>