Civic design bibliography


Reading and navigational strategies of web users with lower literacy skills

Why the article is helpful

  • Differences between the reading and navigational strategies of users with medium to high literacy skills and those with lower literacy skills
  • How to make web-based medical content usable and accessible for lower-literary adults
  • Develop design principles that could be used to design websites

 

About half of adults in the United States read below an eighth grade level, yet most web sites are written at a tenth-grade level. The goal was to understand the differences between the reading and navigational strategies of users with medium to high literacy skills and those with lower literacy skills; and to learn how to make web‐based medical content usable and accessible for lower‐literacy adults. This study also provided crucial design principles that could be used for websites that would meet the needs of users with lower literacy skills to increase user satisfaction.

 

Additional details

Major site redesign guidelines:

  • Eliminate wayfinding as much as possible by keeping information architecture flat and shallow; use a site structure based on “linear information paths”
  • Put the most important information first in its context
  • Write text at a 6-8th grade reading level with a simple sentence structure
  • Keep pages, paragraphs, and sentences short
  • Maintain a single column of content – avoid lists of links or callout features in the right margin
  • Reduce the number of links per page; use inline links primarily to redirect users who are in the wrong “linear information path”
  • Make navigation look and act like navigation; create a clear visual signal of user’s location within the site
  • Use standard link behaviors – no pop-ups, no DHTML rollovers, no new windows
  • Make text large – 14pts for a 5 inch text column
  • Use information graphics and animations to show processes and relationships

 

Links to article

 

Summers, K., & Summers, M. (2005). Reading and navigational strategies of web users with lower literacy skills. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 42(1), NA.