What makes written language hard, what makes it easy to read and to understand?
Recently, easy-to-read German (Leichte Sprache) was developed as a means to make written texts more accessible to people who struggle with reading texts in standard German. However, it is far from clear whether the suggested linguistic means really promote readability and comprehensibility. Moreover, the suggested rules might be stated more precisely and additional factors might be considered. The aim of the current project is to test the effects of linguistic manipulations on the readability and intelligibility of words, sentences and texts for people with intellectual disabilities, for functionally illiterates, for beginning readers, and for readers of German as a second or foreign language.