F Kitchen Sink

Accessibility audit rules

Reading Level Heuristic

Accessibility rule handbook metadata

Rule
DET.A11Y.GENERIC.READING_LEVEL_HEURISTIC · lane deterministic · scope generic
Page status
current
page_version
3bda15a55735e88d878914bc224207c80ce300fc3bd8e6ae4ca2d0d71bc7ef1e
generated_at
2026-05-28T05:09:12.000Z
registry_fingerprint
b3797010c3ca988bb0d21d5e85d4efece0b9e83f311c2d4981ebbf402df7a7c2

Related WCAG success criteria

Indicative mapping for compliance reporting — not a conformance claim. Criteria: 3.1.5

How this rule is checked

Deterministic lane — scope generic. Detected by det-a11y-generic-*.check.js or the axe lane for WCAG-tagged violations.

  • Harness: auditor-tests/invoke-a11y-ruleset-harness.sh on the Before fixture.
  • Audit: analyze-website-a11y.mjs --only-deterministic-rule-ids DET.A11Y.GENERIC.READING_LEVEL_HEURISTIC

Module: docs/design/a11y-audit/deterministic-a11y-rules.md#det-a11y-generic-reading-level-heuristic. See Before / After below.

Purpose

Deterministic accessibility check (generic scope).

Passing signals

  • DOM and/or repo signals satisfy the rule implementation in tools/website-a11y-auditor.
  • For axe-backed WCAG criteria, use --lanes axe,det with an appropriate --standard preset.

Failing signals

  • Auditor emits a finding with ruleId DET.A11Y.GENERIC.READING_LEVEL_HEURISTIC on the crawled URL.
  • Harness: auditor-tests/invoke-a11y-ruleset-harness.sh DET.A11Y.GENERIC.READING_LEVEL_HEURISTIC expects ≥1 finding on the Before fixture.

Before example

Before (failing example)

Article

term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term

term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term

After example

After (passing example)

Article

term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term

term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term

term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term

term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term term

Evidence and remediation

  1. Reproduce with analyze-website-a11y.mjs --only-deterministic-rule-ids DET.A11Y.GENERIC.READING_LEVEL_HEURISTIC when lane is deterministic.
  2. Apply the After markup pattern (or fix generator source for KS rules).
  3. Re-run harness or audit until the rule is clean on the target URL.