Exploring the potential of Easy Language for enhancing website sustainability

Sustainable design principles have become increasingly important in website development, mainly focusing on reducing carbon emissions and energy consumption. Easy language (EL) is a simplified language variety that makes websites more accessible to a wider range of users; but there has been no attention given to its usefulness in sustainability efforts. As such, this study is intended to become a starting point for future research in the area. By examining the intersection between EL and website sustainability guidelines and practices, the study highlights the potential for EL to contribute to sustainable website design. Along the paper, the following theory is defended: when adapted to Easy Language, text and interactions in websites are simplified, which makes them require less data transfer, become more efficient and, ultimately, more sustainable. The paper also presents a small comparative analysis of the sustainability of websites in EL and standard language that indicated that EL generally enhanced the sustainability of websites. The nine websites in EL analysed showed a mean reduction of CO2 production of 42% in comparison to their equivalents in standard language (p = 0.049, F = 2.42). The discussion and results presented open potential solutions for an urgent problem that deserve to be considered and researched further.