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caz -> Readability (3/26/2008 11:47:33)
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This is not the same thing as legibility where font choice and layout styling are most important, but the whole thing. As well as being legible is the content understandable by it's intended audience? How well do they - the users read, what kind of attention span do they have...these things are usually unknowns in web design, as well as in print; so over the years researchers have come up with a variety of tests that try to determine some of these unknowns. They are all fairly well known such as the FOG, SMOG and Gunning indexes as well as the Closure tests, but they take a lot of hard work counting sentence, word length etc. and calculating the results.
The drudgery has been taken out of this process by automation and you can access this service readily from the Web Accessibility Toolbar which has been upgraded to Version 2 in beta for IE7 and Vista.
http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readingresults
Looking at the table of typical Fog index scores and their interpretation where the lowest scores equate with reading the Bible, TV Guides and Mark Twain - we used to have the tabloids like the Sun and the Sport here [:D]; I was struck by the definition of the reading matter aimed at the highest level...
- Over 20 Only government sites can get away with this, because you can't ignore them.
- Over 30 The government is covering something up
Nice to see a bit of humour in these dry subjects. [;)]
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