Search results for plain english

  • Readability testing tools

    Found in Standards & guidance / Design and UX / Content design guidance / Content design tools and resources / Readability testing tools

    Readability testing can quickly tell you how hard content is to read. But do not rely on automated suggestions.

  • 5 lessons learnt from testing on beta.govt.nz

    Found in Blog / Published 26 March 2014 / By Siobhan Cotter ,

    The Govt.nz project isn’t just about building a website. It’s about government doing things differently. The project approach involves using Agile development, focusing on plain English, and embedding a tester within the project team. It turns out that when you combine these elements, you get a wide range of unexpected benefits. In this post, Siobhan Cotter talks about her experience as tester on the Govt.nz team.

    On the Govt.nz project, one of the guiding principles being followed is that a fu…

  • Accessibility

    Found in Standards & guidance / Design and UX / Accessibility

    Web accessibility is about inclusion — making sure everyone, including disabled people and those using assistive technologies, can access online information and services.

  • Step-by-step guide to content audits

    Found in Blog / Published 31 July 2013 / By Uli Trute ,

    … what you are looking for, and turn your criteria into columns for your spread sheet. In a recent content audit, I was primarily interested in the quality of the content. The Commerce Commission had a new website content strategy. We had also started a plain English programme, and the content just wasn’t up to scratch anymore.

    Questions to ask here could be:

    Is it current?
    Is it correct?
    Is it plain English?
    Is it even currently relevant at all?
    Other things to look out for could be functional…

  • Govt.nz - how we create our content

    Found in Blog / Published 31 January 2014 / By Alison Jack ,

    … 4 times until I’m sure it’s ready for review.

    5. ReviewThis part I’ll admit we stole.

    The review process we use was developed as part of the Welfare Reform Work that was undertaken by the Ministry of Social Development in 2012/13 — they just won a Plain English Award for this work.

    I’ll ask a couple of my colleagues to have a look at what I’ve written. Fresh eyes can see if I’ve missed anything and ask questions that I’ve not even thought of.

    If it’s something really nasty or I’m having rea…

  • The second CWP meetup on analytics for the public sector

    Found in Blog / Published 28 August 2017 / By Paul Murray ,

    … CWP.

    View Nicole’s slide on SlideShare

    Using analytics to understanding your audienceGuest speaker and analytics expert, Lana Gibson, presented her talk on how to best use analytics and data to improve experiences for public sector audiences. Using plain english and clear examples, Lana demonstrated how analytics can be used to drive website design, content creation and performance for public sector digital teams.

    View Lana’s slides on SlideShare

    Top analytics insights1. Design with dataMak…

  • Vision & goals for Govt.nz — give us your feedback

    Found in Blog / Published 16 February 2016 / By Victoria Wray ,

    … task involves more than one government organisation
    Reduce duplicated information across government
    Share our work and create solutions that can be used again
    What we’ll do
    Make sure we’re AA compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
    Use plain English across the entire site, with a Flesch reading ease score of at least 60% for all content
    Collaborate with partners in government, and outside of it
    How we’ll measure our goals
    We’ll use analytics to show that information moved to Gov…

  • LabPlus: Helping low income home-owners: Moving into a Rates Rebates Alpha

    Found in Blog / Published 04 April 2018 / By Siobhan McCarthy ,

    … improvement. We looked into how data was being submitted by ratepayers in their paper applications, and what forms this data took when digitised, transported, and processed. We looked over the form and worked on how the language could be improved to be more plain English, and how form fields could be made easier to complete. For example, when asking an applicant's income, we could provide an option to press a button to state that they are receiving NZ Superannuation, rather than asking the…

  • Testing comprehension of content on beta.govt.nz

    Found in Blog / Published 02 April 2014 / By Katie Johnston ,

    … replace every 5th word with a blank space
    ask people to fill in the gaps.

    The idea is that if you’re using plain language and simple sentences, users should be able to predict the missing words and still understand the text. A page is thought to be plain English if users can correctly guess over 60% of the missing words.
    Our results
    We’ve tried it three times — each time with half our users completing a page of our content and half completing the original text from an agency’s website. Since…

  • DPUP Guidelines in brief

    Found in Standards & guidance / Privacy, security and risk / Privacy / Data Protection and Use Policy (DPUP) / Read the DPUP Guidelines / DPUP Guidelines in brief

    Understand the key activities that make up the Data Protection and Use Policy (DPUP) Guidelines and how the DPUP Principles and the Privacy Act 2020 apply to those activities.

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