Recent research has shown that there are a number of factors which affect a learner’s ability to read texts. These include:

• Linguistic difficulties: word difficulty and sentence difficulty
• Cohesion and coherence
• Conceptual difficulty
• Legibility and print issues
• Text organisation.

The Fair access by design (2010) document focuses almost exclusively on the sentence difficulty and readability aspects in the above list. Research suggests, however, that readability problems can be caused by other textual factors. Factors to do with textual cohesion and coherence have been especially neglected in the past.

Your views are sought on two topics through a questionnaire:

• The principles of language accessibility for test developers in charge of writing test items for National Curriculum Assessments
• What affects the readability of test items? What are the characteristics of the target readers of these items?

The questionnaire can be completed online or at Annex 2 of the PDF version of this consultation.

If you would like to read more about this subject before answering these questions, please look at the Ofqual commissioned report by language experts David Wray and Dahlia Janan.