Language - Reading and Navigational Strategies of Web Users with Lower Literacy Skills

This is a 2005 academic paper written by Kathryn Summers from the University of Baltimore and Michael Summers from the Nielsen Norman Group.

Abstract

About half of the adults in the U.S. read at the 8th grade level or below. Yet most websites are written at the 10th grade level or higher. The goal of this two-year study, sponsored by Pfizer, was twofold:

1. To understand the differences between the reading and navigational strategies of users with medium to high literacy skills and those with lower literacy skills

2. To learn how to make web-based medical content usable and accessible for lower-literacy adults, and to develop design principles that could be used to design websites that would meet the needs of both higher and lower literacy users.

http://redish.net/images/stories/PDF/summers_asist2005.pdf (PDF124KB)