- From: Alan Chuter <achuter@teleservicios.com>
- Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 10:40:51 +0200
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
This news item describes a study of the readability and understandability of Diabetes web sites. Most require a reading age of 11 to 14 years while that of the general population in the UK is (amazingly) nine years. There doesn't seem to be any mention of web accessibility guidelines. BBC News article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3641634.stm "Many diabetes sufferers cannot understand the health advice they are given on the NHS Direct Online website and many other internet pages, a new study concludes. The language of the diabetes pages of the NHS Direct Online site can only be understood by people whose reading ability is well beyond that of the average UK citizen, the survey says. It warns of potential 'serious consequences' of patients misunderstanding the information. Dr Maged Boulos, of the University of Bath's School for Health, looked at pages about diabetes on 15 internet health sites run mainly by charities and official bodies." (University of Bath press release) http://www.bath.ac.uk/pr/releases/diabetes-survey.htm The paper is online (in PDF) at http://staff.bath.ac.uk/mpsmnkb/MNKBoulos_HDL04.PDF Alan Chuter achuter@teleservicios.com Fundosa Teleservicios ONCE Foundation Madrid, Spain
Received on Tuesday, 14 September 2004 08:56:02 UTC