Lower-Literacy Users

Developed by: Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox
Type of resource: web site
Target audience: General
Cost: Free access

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. The article explores characteristics of lower literacy users, and offers design and writing tips to keep them on your site, as well as results of a study to show the effectiveness of gearing your site to lower-literacy users. In the United States alone lower-literacy users represent almost 50% of the population, and anyone who is not a native speaker of the language being read is more likely to have similiar reading characteristics.

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html