Easy to Read on the Web – State of the Art and Research Directions

“Easy to Read on the Web” aims at raising awareness and collecting/deriving concise and up-to-date recommendations, guidelines, standards and tools for enhancing the web experience for users with cognitive disabilities and other groups facing problems with “standard” information on the Web. Although a large and most diverse user group is concerned, the state of the art in web accessibility research, development and practice shows only little efforts and progress in this domain.Following a symposium initiated and put in place by the W3C/WAI “Research and Development Working group” [http://www.w3.org/WAI/RD/] in December 2012 on this topic, this paper discusses the state of the art in Easy to Read on the Web and in related domains and outlines areas of research which should help to better address the needs of people with cognitive disabilities and other groups in using web based information as well as the web itself and its applications.