On the Prevalence of Leichte Sprache on the German Web

Abstract

Web accessibility guidelines call for website content to be ‘understandable’. In the German public sector, this principle has been interpreted as a specific set of writing rules known as ‘Leichte Sprache’ (LS). In this paper, we set out to investigate the prevalence of LS on the German web, using both web measurements and qualitative methods. We find that while many of the prerequisites for the creation of content in LS are now in place, such as accessibility monitoring authorities or procedures to translate content into LS, the vast majority of public sector websites are still not accessible in this regard. Based on these findings, we offer four technical and policy recommendations to move towards a more inclusive web.