I've just released the first version of The Readability Testing Tool.   It takes either a supplied URI, or directly inputted text.

Indices measured

  • Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease
  • Flesch Kincaid Grade Level
  • Gunning Fog Score
  • Coleman Liau Index
  • Automated Readability Index.

Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease is a scale of 0-100. A high score means the text is easier to read. Low scores suggest the text is complicated to understand. All the other indices are based on the US school grade level system.

Features

I've added features that aren't available anywhere else.

  1. Readability testing by referer.
    Allows you to add a link to the site on your blog, so that you can rapidly view the readability scores
  2. Readability testing a specific part of the web page.
    If the article text in your blog is contained in e.g. div#content, this can be used to test only the article text.  This means that the result is not affected by the navigational elements.

Future plans

Future releases are planned with e.g.

  • API for AJAX requests returning JSON/XML results.
  • Integration with other online services

Suggest improvements or comment below.