I believe there is also a concerted effort going on to reduce the
literacy level of many health-related publications and Web sites-both by
doctors and by health organizations. One of the health sites we looked
at recently and did a Flesch-Kincaid readability study on came out to a
reading level of 17.6 or so--above the level of the ordinary reader and
way above the level of someone with low literacy skills.


Gail J. Price
Multimedia Specialist
National Center for Family Literacy
325 W. Main Street, Suite 300
Louisville, KY 40202
gprice at famlit.org
502 584-1133, ext. 112
 

-----Original Message-----
From: familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:familyliteracy-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of David J. Rosen
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 2:27 PM
To: The Family Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [FamilyLiteracy 1191] Re: Contextualized literacy instruction
andplain writing

Hello Jeanne and others,

On Sep 8, 2008, at 9:02 AM, Jeanne McGehee wrote:


> Government forms are too complex for many poor readers to  

> understand and fill out.  The W-4, which must be filled out when  

> someone takes a job,  is needlessly complicated.  I also feel that  

> many poor people pay high fees to have their income tax foms filled  

> out for them because of their complexity.


Several years ago, reading expert and computer software education and  
training designer Michael Hillinger [ http:// 
www.workingsimulations.com/ ] was working with a large U.S. company  
that had documents that every employee had to read and understand.  
The company was unwilling to change the documents, but it recognized  
that some employees with low literacy couldn't read them. They asked  
Hillinger to create a software program for the documents so that good  
readers could just read the document, but those who needed assistance  
(with reading or understanding a word, or understanding a process --  
who needed an explanation or example) could choose hyperlinks to  
provide the assistance. This worked for most if not all the  
employees. Since then, there have been other examples of using  
hyperliknks this way on the web. Web-based versions of critical  
government forms, such as the W-4, could be created  with hypertext  
assistance. One key to their success, however, would be field-testing  
them with low-literate adults to see if they work well.

David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net