Website Readability

Readability is an often overlooked aspect of website accessibility. In fact, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines require that documents are clear and simple. Ideally, your site should be easy for the end-user to scan for information.

Juicy Studios has three readability tests available at http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php: Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid. These are reading level algorithms that can give you a good sense of how easy your text is to read.

The Gunning-Fog index returns a number between 6 and 30, with 6 being the level of TV Guide, and 15-20 the level of most academic papers (the website gives a more complete explanation of results).

The Flesch Reading Ease scale rates the text on a 100 point scale. Shoot for 40-70.

Flesch-Kincaid grade level attempts to measure how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content.

In addition, the readability test will return the average number of words per sentence, syllables per word, and more. The results of my own Computer Applications website are shown below.