Another attempt at plain language
Doug Ewell
doug at ewellic.org
Sun Sep 13 19:12:56 CEST 2015
Michael Everson wrote:
>>> … is not, I think, best solved by a subtag.
>>
>> But how should it be solved then? I get your concerns, but I have not
>> yet found any alternatives.
>
> I don’t know. A conformance statement? In any case it doesn’t seem
> taggable. There are books for early readers and young adults and
> college students but the difference of language use in those books is
> not precisely defined. Nor is the WCAG’s recommendation (or
> requirement) without ambiguity.
If the goal is to allow conformance to the WCAG, why doesn't someone
simply ask the Working Group for guidance? It's not as if we have to
guess at the intent of the Founding Fathers; the specification is from
2008, and the WG has published supplementary material on this spec as
recently as this year.
As a side note, the supplementary material does include this passage
from a UNESCO standard:
"According to the Open Society Mental Health Initiative, the concept of
Easy to Read cannot be universal, and it will not be possible to write a
text that will suit the abilities of all people with literacy and
comprehension problems. Using the clearest and simplest language
appropriate is highly desirable, but the WCAG Working Group could not
find a way to test whether this had been achieved. The use of reading
level is a way to introduce testability into a Success Criterion that
encourages clear writing. Supplementary content can be a powerful
technique for people with some classes of cognitive disability."
implying that a set of subtags representing quantifiable reading levels,
as Tobias mentioned at one point, might be what the WG is really after.
--
Doug Ewell | http://ewellic.org | Thornton, CO 🇺🇸
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