In this issue

Accessibility for lower-literacy users

Accessibility is a big issue these days, but very little attention is given to another group of disadvantaged users – people with a lower literacy level.  If your client is a government organisation, charity, or similar they will inevitably have a box to tick for accessibility, but lower-literacy will probably be ignored unless you point it out. This is a much neglected issue. If your client’s web site may be used by lower-literacy users then this should be a factor in both site design and the writing.

Who has a lower literacy problem

Web site users may have a low literacy level because:

• English is not their first language
• They are dyslexic (5 million in the UK)
• They are young
• They have mental problems that make it hard to focus for long periods

Jacob Nielsen (reference below)  estimates that around 30% of web users may have a low literacy level. 

Designing your web site for lower literacy levels

Most advice in this area falls back on general accessibility guidelines and there are many similarities

• Both sets of users tend to read each word on a page rather than scanning as most users do.
• They are helped by getting the most important ideas compacted into one place that they can get to easily. 

However other recommendations for accessibility don’t apply.  For example graphics may significantly help low literacy readers especially if they help flag what the page is about.

Readability indexes

A primary factor with lower-literacy users is the level of English that is used.  Generally this is expressed as reading age or something related to reading age.  This can be measured and there are a number of formulae:

• Kincaid formula
• Automated readability index
• Coleman-Liau formula
• Flesch reading easy formula
• Fog index
• Lix formula
• SMOG Garding

You can check out scores on some typical web pages here.

These calculations are based on things like sentence length and word length, so of course total gibberish might get a good score.   However they provide a good guideline. 

Word for Windows will work out the Flesch Index and display (US) reading level. 

More information

Gez Lemon has (or had – the site is temporarily down now) tools that would calculate readability for any given web page.  http://www.juicystudio.com/ 

The dyslexia institute has guidelines for writing for dyslexics.

I was alerted to this issue because of a recent Alertbox by Jacob Nielsen. 
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html

Business intelligence

There are some great maps and satellite images on Google now.  http://maps.google.com/  sadly no satellite images for the UK yet. 

There is an interesting case study on MarketingSherpa this month.    (Open access until May 16th so you should catch it).  It is about the development of marketing materials – including the web site.    They systematically catalogued objections from the sales team, and interviewed clients to catalogue the main benefits of the product as their clients saw it, then used this material to create their collateral. 

Technical tips - Waiting for Google (2)

Here is the situation.  You have a great web site with pages and pages of great content.  But Google only indexes the home page – no further.  What is the problem?

1. If the site is new, the home page is going to be the first page indexed.  Maybe you just have to wait in patience for a month or two.
2. Can Google follow your navigation links?  If you have some fancy Javascript navigation system, humans can follow them but Google won’t.  If your navigation is buried in Flash then Google may follow the links but there is a good chance it won’t.
3. Does your site use a content management system that generates each page on the fly from a program?  To check this out, look at a non-index page and see if the web address has a ‘?’ in it.  If so, the pages should get indexed by Google but may not if the URL looks like a transaction.  Google looks for things like ‘ID=xxxx’ in the query string (the stuff following the ‘?’.  Generally using this type of content management system is bad for your search engine health.  Switch to one that publishes the pages as flat HTML files. 
4. Is the home page the only page that Google likes?  Check last month’s newsletter for pointers on reasons that Google will not index a site. These apply to individual pages not just whole sites, so your home page may be OK but the rest of the site is not.
5. Does the entry on Google show the full title of the page and some of the text, or is it just the web address? If it is the latter, then it means that Google has found your site from another web site, but hasn’t actually visited your home page and indexed it. 

News from the web

 Want to blog?  Now Microsoft is offering a free service. (http://spaces.msn.com/)

Digital cameras will outsell film cameras this year, and web sites that store and print images are the new opportunity for Kodak.  But HP is attacking that market too.

Google has just introduced a Q&A service for searches.  Search on “who is Jane Fonda” and google gives you the answer.   It is limited at present, but Google are developing it.

The EU is trying to boost the introduction of broadband over power lines. 

Philadelphia is setting up a city-wide wifi network to offer free (in public spaces) and low cost wireless access throughout the city. 

New domain extensions .jobs and .travel have just been announced. 

Google is testing a service for finding local services such as restaurants via a mobile phone. 

They are also testing a personalised search feature that remembers searches you have made before.

Prize for most tasteless spam of the month goes to the mail offering the teachings of the late Pope which links to a get-rich-quick web site.