Jtm-pnw-session-low-lit

Maurreen Skowran is a former copy editor at the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer. Last year she moved to Albuquerque, N.M., to help with her family. She realized quickly that there is news or media gap in Albuquerque. Low-literacy adults need ways to access the news and important civic information. She believes this is a national issue, and she has proposed a Knight News Challenge project to trial a solution for Albuquerqe.

Q: What does this have to do with the digital divide?

• Skowran: People on the lower level of the economic spectrum -- physical access via libraries at work or elsewhere -- so there is physical access to the Internet. But for low-literacy adults, it is more overwhelming. A lot of sites are fairly complex and there is also document complexity. Newspapers are easier to read than websites, because websites have complex taxonomy.

Skowran cites Jacob Nielsen and his work on web usability. He has studied low-literacy adult usability issues to some degree. Low-literacy adults have to plow through one word at a time.

Q: How would pages look?

• Skowran: There would be an icon on each page representing the subject matter of a page. Only three to six icons on a page. It might take folks longer to get to the page they want, but they will understand how they got there.