Re: plain/simple/easy language variant subtag

> On Sep 17, 2015, at 11:23 AM, Phill Jenkins <pjenkins@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> 
> > -  And as soon as you start doing this - you can’t just do it once. 
> > You need to have many different versions if you are to be able to 
> > have it be understandable by people with different problems 
> > understanding it — without losing more information than that 
> > particular person needs to have removed in order for them to understand it. 
> > - one-size-fits-one.     Not one-size-fits-all.    also not  two-
> > sizes-fit-all. 
> 
> OK, so how many levels then?  CEFR has six levels: A1, A2 <http://www.examenglish.com/A2/index.php>, B1 <http://www.examenglish.com/B1/index.php>, B2 <http://www.examenglish.com/B2/index.php>, C1, C2, do we need more than 6?   
> 

As many as we can.  How many sizes of suit-coats do we need?    If we can only do 6 that is better than 3 or 4 or 5.    But there are more variations in how someone understands than there are measurements in a  (rack bought) suit.    

I don’t think we can every address this well until we have a means to do this in a personalized way.   We don’t know how to do this today.   And it isn’t practical today (evidently - looking at web content) to do even two sizes much less 3 or 6 for web content.    and that will always not be a good fit - except for a small percentage.  Like a suit - if you make it big enough - everyone can fit in it - but it won’t really be functional to them.   For cognitive access- if you make it very simple explanation/description - everyone can understand - but you will have left out a lot of information that would be usable and understandable by many.         I think we need personalized materials (at least with lots of sizes and ideally roughly fit to the individual). 


(For those who don’t know CEFR -  see    http://www.examenglish.com/CEFR/cefr.php <http://www.examenglish.com/CEFR/cefr.php>.    It is actually more to do with a persons ability to  communicate to others rather than with levels of materials - but the idea is somewhat similar so interesting to look at)