---
name: Plain language
slug: plain-language
category: accessibility
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-28T00:00:00.000Z
definition: Writing interface copy at the reading level of the people using it,
  with short sentences, familiar words, and the point first, rather than at the
  level of the org chart.
aliases:
  - name: reading level
    source: wcag
  - name: plain English
    source: govuk
  - name: lower secondary reading level
    source: wcag
tags:
  - content-design
  - wcag
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - chunking
    - readability
    - cognitive-load
    - reader-mode
    - symbol-support
    - microcopy
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "WCAG 2.2: Success Criterion 3.1.5 Reading Level"
    url: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#reading-level
  - title: "Understanding Success Criterion 3.1.5: Reading Level, W3C WAI"
    url: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/reading-level.html
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: the copy is correct but nobody can act on it
---

Plain language is not simplified language, and it is not a tone. It is writing at the reading
level of the people who have to act on the writing, which usually means short sentences, words
people already own, the active voice, and the thing the reader must do placed at the front
rather than after the justification. WCAG puts a number on the bar: success criterion 3.1.5
Reading Level asks that text not require reading ability more advanced than the lower secondary
education level, and where it does, that a version or a summary at that level be available. It
sits at Level AAA, which is why so many teams treat it as optional. The population it serves
does not experience it as optional.

It is worth separating from [readability](/readability), because the two words get used
interchangeably and they name different failures. Readability is a property of the setting: the
size, the contrast, the measure, the leading, whether the letterforms hold up at that size.
Plain language is a property of the words: whether a person who can see the sentence perfectly
well can also get the instruction out of it. A sentence can be beautifully set and impossible
to parse, and a plain sentence can be set in grey nine pixel type. They fail independently, and
fixing one has never once fixed the other.

The audience is much wider than the accessibility framing suggests, which is the usual shape of
a curb cut. It includes people with cognitive and learning disabilities and people with low
literacy, and it also includes everyone reading in a second language, everyone reading on a
phone in a queue, and everyone reading while frightened, which is most people at the moment
they meet an error message or a bill. It compounds with the reader-side controls: someone using
[dynamic type](/dynamic-type) at its largest setting sees a handful of words per line, and a
forty word sentence at that size is a paragraph they have to hold in their head. The place it
pays best is wherever the interface blocks the way, so the copy on an
[interstitial](/interstitial), a permission prompt or a consent screen is worth more editing
attention than anything on the happy path.

In practice the failures are boringly consistent. Copy inherits the vocabulary of the
organisation rather than the reader: the names of internal systems, the legal wording that was
safe to sign off, "submit" instead of the thing being sent. The remedy is equally boring. Say
what the reader has to do, then say the deadline, then say what happens if they miss it. Name
things the way the reader names them. Then measure the result rather than arguing about it,
because sentence length and word familiarity are countable, and a first draft that reads at
university level almost always says the same thing in half the words.