Enforce locale reading levels

[amyjko]

What's the problem?

Our primary audience is young adolescents, particularly those who are multilingual and may have learning disabilities. Part of supporting them is keeping the reading level of writing low, to perhaps a 4th grade reading level. We currently do nothing to enforce this, aside from providing guidance in our localization guide.

What's the design idea?

There are reading level checkers, such as this platform:

https://readable.com/

Perhaps it's possible, across all languages we support, to check for reading levels, or at least just terminology complexity, so that we can avoid introducing language complexity. There's lots of design work to do to understand what simple language requirements we want to impose.

Design specification

Reporters can leave this blank. Designers should write a detailed, precise description of what is to be built. If images are necessary to convey this precisely, make sure to include image descriptions, so everyone can see what is in the image. Do not link to external documents; everything should be embedded here. Once the design is approved, we will remove the needs design tag and replace it with the buildable tag, signalling that it can be built.

[elianna-b]

Transferring my additions to this topic from a closed issue for better organization and relevancy for future contributors (specifically referencing the tutorial):

Expected Behavior

The tutorial is laid out as a conversation between mascots and the user to help the user gain familiarity with Wordplay. It begins with a short introduction and then prompts the user to attempt small tasks to learn about Wordplay. The tutorial should be easily accessible and understandable for young students, with simple language and short sentences to avoid overwhelming the user learning code.

Potential Issues Making the Tutorial More Difficult to Understand

Throughout the tutorial, most slides have few and short sentences with proper line breaks for better readability and to prevent overwhelming young students. However, some slides, for example, Silence 9/15, do not have any line breaks between questions.

Content Questions to Ponder

• Should we ensure consistent styling with line breaks for better readability?
• Could there be too much unnecessary plot/story in the tutorial that detracts from learning the content and causes confusion?

Opinions Post Discussion with Amy (Reference Issue: #467)

1. Engagement vs. Thematic Balance: Creating a world where glyphs have personality and different communication styles is engaging for younger students. For college students, it could seem tedious and disengaging, but this is not our demographic. Younger students might benefit from connecting with the program through characters, making Wordplay's theme memorable, unique, and easily recognizable, which is important for an application's identity. The challenge is balancing thematic elements. While the core tutorial handles this well, run-on paragraphs without line breaks and excessive focus on the fictional world can detract from the tutorial's helpful aspects.

2. Accessibility and Readability: A verbose, monologue-style personality (i.e., glyphs that create run-ons) can be detrimental. It is not recognized as a personality by screen readers, and there is no audio for tone. Pauses (line breaks) improve accessibility, making the text easier to discern for those with eyesight issues or difficulties reading long paragraphs with small fonts and a lack of spacing.

My hope is that these questions and points are considered when further enforcing local readings levels.

[amyjko]

Thank you for your comments and questions @elianna-b! They're great points of design discussion for this proposed feature.