The ease with which an intended target audience can read and understand written material that’s important to them is a top concern among physicians, politicians, professors, and, it turns out, special education teachers.
A 2006 study by the Advocacy Institute found that schools and school districts weren’t communicating with parents about the rights of their special ed kids. “Parents’ Rights Notices that are not easily readable do not comply with the law, and they do not meet its intent to provide clear information to parents,” the institute wrote. The institute continues today to dedicate itself, through webinars and published reports, to the development of products, projects, and services that work to improve the lives of people with disabilities.
More recently, a study out of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reached essentially the same conclusion about how well schools communicate information about special ed programs to parents. Wrote Sarah A Nagro and Marc L Stein in the January issue of the Journal of Disability Policy Studies:
Effective communication is essential for successful school-family partnerships. Written communication is most common due to the efficiency of written documents, but challenges include assuring the information disseminated to parents is accessible based on readability, clarity, complexity, and structure particularly for parents of students with disabilities and parents with low levels of literacy. … Results from eight studies, published over 30 years, evaluated 461 documents and showed divergent trends in recommended and actual reading levels where written communication became less accessible over time. Recommended readability levels ranged from 5th to below 9th grade, yet actual readability levels were almost 11th grade on average.
The Hopkins study confirms, once again, other research findings—and not just a few of them. For years, researchers in other fields have been finding published information, important for the public to understand, that was often written at a readability level that may be too high.
- A study in the April 2015 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology determined that the Flesch-Kincaid readability levels for patient information about certain skin conditions ranged from grade 8.7 to grade 12.7. Researchers wrote, “Although absolute values vary between the different indices, the trends do not. … [A]ll three organizations [studied], on all topics, fail to meet the desired sixth grade level.”
- In the January issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology, researchers examined 41 patient education articles created by the European Society of Radiology. “The patient education resources on the ESR website are written at a comprehension level well above that of the average Internet viewer,” they concluded. “The resources fail to meet the NIH and AMA guidelines that patient education material be written between the third and seventh grade levels. Recasting these resources in a simpler format would probably lead to greater comprehension by ESR website viewers.”
- This month, Epilepsy & Behavior published a study showing that Wikipedia articles on epilepsy were too hard to understand. “The average [readability] score of the Wikipedia articles was indicative of a difficult readability level … 14th grade,” wrote Francesco Brigo et al. “Popular websites providing information on epilepsy, including Wikipedia, often demonstrate a low level of readability. This can be ameliorated by increasing access to clear and concise online information on epilepsy and health in general. Short ‘basic’ summaries targeted to patients and non-medical users should be added to articles published in specialist websites and Wikipedia to ease readability.”
What these constant studies demonstrate is that it’s nothing new to find unreadable information on the Web about topics that are of great interest. A few of the studies in the scientific literature examined 20 or 30 years’ worth of articles.
The question is: What can be done about it? Here are some suggestions:
(1) Target the fifth grader. Using tools in word processing software, you can determine a document’s readability level quickly. Most people can understand writing at a fifth-grade level, and if the intent is to communicate with “most people,” keep it to fifth grade. Short sentences. Not too many big words.
(2) As much as you want to avoid saying the wrong thing, try to avoid saying even the right thing in legal-sounding language. Nobody will be impressed by what they can’t understand, and again, if the point of writing the document is to communicate, use conversational, not lawyer-like, vocabulary and tone.
(3) Follow good examples. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction published “Special Education in Plain Language,” a website that provides explanations about education for special-needs students in simple, plain language that’s easy to read. It’s just as accurate as any other special ed info, but it’s much easier to read than typical publications sent to parents.
Finally, although you may have many concerns when writing to parents, keep readability in the forefront of your mind as you write each document and before you send it out. Remember, not all parents have the college education you do, but that doesn’t make them any less deserving of their right to understand the information you present to them about their children’s education.