Low Literacy Users on the Web

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From Jakob Nielsen
"Lower-Literacy Users

Summary:
Lower-literacy users exhibit very different reading behaviors than higher-literacy users: they plow text rather than scan it, and they miss page elements due to a narrower field of view.

We've known since 1997 how most users read on the Web: they scan text and pick out the pieces that interest them. Content usability guidelines have remained mostly the same since 1997, but now there's news.

We recently expanded our research to cover a big part of the population left out of earlier studies: lower-literacy users. As it turns out, their online behavior is radically different than that of higher-literacy users."

In trialling changes to websites to meet the needs of lower literacy users, higher literacy users benefited also.