Low literacy and web design

Low-Literacy Users (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

It scares me that 48% of the US population has low literacy (defined as being able to read, but having difficulty) According to Nielsen, studies show that low-literacy readers tend to read word for word slowly, rather than scanning portions of text and navigation tools quickly. They skip over anything that is too tedious for them to read and accept things at face value rather than digging for more information. They also tend not to scroll down, and searching is a problem for them as well. As of now, the majority of Internet users are high-literacy readers, but the number of low-level readers is growing, and Nielsen points out that web pages should be designed for these readers and gives suggestions for doing so that would probably work in print as well with some adaptation.