Functional Literacy

The level of reading and writing skill needed to handle everyday tasks — filling out forms, reading medication instructions, understanding a utility bill, using a web service. Adults below this threshold are described as functionally illiterate, which in the United States is typically operationalised as reading below a fourth-to-eighth-grade level. The concept is central to accessibility practice because prior literacy research has described more than 30% of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing high-school graduates in the US as functionally illiterate, and similar patterns exist among other populations including people with cognitive disabilities and late second-language learners. Functional literacy is the rationale for plain-language mandates, Automatic Text Simplification tools, and the WCAG 3.3.5 Help guideline.