Test Readability

Revision as of 08:37, 14 January 2011

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 Asking your users if they understand your content may not produce accurate results ([http://www.alistapart.com/articles/testing-content/ source]), but there are other methods for estimating readability.
 Online tools - such as those by [http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php Juicy Studios]&nbsp;or [http://www.addedbytes.com/code/readability-score/ Added Bytes] - use reading-level algorithms to automatically score the readability of your content. These give you a useful indication, especially for comparing relative scores for numerous content items (e.g. to identify the potential 'worst'), but shouldn't be relied on for critical content.
+A more time-consuming but accurate solution is to perform a small usability test, by asking sample users to read your content and then quiz them with questions to test their comprehension. You could even integrate a survey module onto relevant pages to semi-automate this process.
+You could also consider a Cloze test, which is an "''assessment consisting of a portion of text with certain words removed, where the participant is asked to replace the missing words''" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test source]). [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/testing-content/ Read more about how to conduct a cloze test for web content].
 === Why Use This Pattern  ===