developing Supplemental requirement

Common Words Used

Group: text-and-wording • Guideline: clear-language

Summary in Plain English

Common words are used, and uncommon ones come with definitions. This applies to languages with more than 1,500 words; names of people and places are exempt, as are languages with no high-frequency corpus.

Why It Matters

Vocabulary is the most common barrier in text. Uncommon words stop readers with cognitive and learning disabilities, and readers working in a second language.

Scope: When This Applies

The draft's own conditions, quoted from guidelines/groups/text-and-wording/clear-language/common-words-used.md.

Applies when

human languages have more than 1,500 words.

Except when

the words are for names of people or places, or
the language does not have a high-frequency corpus.

Notes in the draft

This is not a core requirement because a list of common words would not cover terms that are known by specific audiences, such as accounting terms on an accounting site. However, in future guidance for policymakers, it is an example of a supplemental requirement that could be made mandatory for public service and education providers.

Lists of common words are called high-frequency corpora. They exist for many languages including Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, and Russian as well as American English, British English, and Canadian English.

W3C Working Group Status

W3C Maturity Status: developing

Track / Group: text-and-wording

Open Questions Recorded in the Draft

The editors' own notes (:::ednote) in guidelines/groups/text-and-wording/clear-language/common-words-used.md. These are the questions the group has written down as unresolved — not a summary of discussion written here.

Research shows that using common words and defining uncommon words improves understanding. Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities recommends using the 1,500 highest-frequency words or phrases because people with severe language impairments are most likely to know these terms. However, more research is needed to confirm if the same threshold applies to many languages for distinguishing common from uncommon words.

W3C Threads on This Provision

2 GitHub threads carrying 9 comments, fetched from w3c/wcag3 by the tracker. Titles, numbers and states are the threads' own.

Nobody has read these threads and written up the positions yet, so only the threads themselves are listed.

W3C Raw Source Text

Verbatim from guidelines/groups/text-and-wording/clear-language/common-words-used.md · informative document: informative/guidelines/text-and-wording/clear-language/common-words-used.md

Common words are used, and definitions are available for uncommon words. 

:::applies-when
* human languages have more than 1,500 words.
:::

:::except-when
* the words are for names of people or places, or
* the language does not have a high-frequency corpus.
:::

:::note
This is not a core requirement because a list of common words would not cover terms that are known by specific audiences, such as accounting terms on an accounting site. However, in future guidance for policymakers, it is an example of a supplemental requirement that could be made mandatory for public service and education providers.

Lists of common words are called high-frequency corpora. They exist for many languages including Arabic, Hindi, Mandarin, and Russian as well as American English, British English, and Canadian English.
:::

:::ednote
Research shows that using common words and defining uncommon words improves understanding. <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/coga-usable/#what-to-do-12">Making Content Usable for People with Cognitive and Learning Disabilities</a> recommends using the 1,500 highest-frequency words or phrases because people with severe language impairments are most likely to know these terms. However, more research is needed to confirm if the same threshold applies to many languages for distinguishing common from uncommon words. 
:::