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Reading Level Slider

2025-12-19

Show HN: The Wiki Times – Read Any Article at Your Grade Level (K-8)

I built a tool that rewrites any article to match your reading level by intelligently swapping vocabulary while preserving meaning and layout.

Live demo:

Try it: the Reading Level app.

The Problem Nobody Talks About

54% of American adults read below a 6th-grade level, and low literacy affects 130 million adults in the U.S. Despite this, almost all online content is written at college level or higher. News sites, Wikipedia, Substack posts – they're all optimized for advanced readers.

This isn't just an education issue – it's an accessibility crisis. We have screen readers for the blind, captions for the deaf, but almost nothing for the reading-challenged.

How It Works

The Wiki Times uses a two-tier approach:

1. LLM rewrites (optional): Use DeepSeek/OpenAI/Claude to rewrite entire articles at specific grade levels (K-8). Fast, coherent, contextually aware.
2. Datamuse fallback: No API key? No problem. The tool uses Datamuse's free thesaurus API to swap individual words based on syllable count and complexity. It's surprisingly effective and requires zero setup.

The key insight: vocabulary drives readability, not sentence structure. By keeping layout constant and only adjusting word choice, readers get a consistent experience across grade levels.

Features

• Grade slider (K-8): Scroll or use arrow keys to adjust complexity in real-time
• Visual diff system: Color-coded highlights show which words changed and why
• Multicolor mode: Rainbow hash-based coloring so identical words stay the same color across grades (makes tracking substitutions easier)
• Flashcard system: Click any highlighted word to save it for vocabulary practice
• Side-by-side comparison: See how "utilize" becomes "use" as you slide down grades
• Works with any URL: Wikipedia, blogs, Substack, news sites

The Tech Stack

Single HTML file. No build process. Uses:

• Tailwind CSS for styling
• Wikipedia API for structured content
• Jina Reader proxy for general web pages
• Datamuse API for synonym laddering (free, 100k requests/day)
• Optional LLM integration (bring your own key)

All API keys stored locally in browser – never touches a server.

Why Care

The "readability crisis" isn't just about education – it's information access. When health information, voting guides, and financial advice are all written at college level, you've created a two-tier information economy.

This tool doesn't dumb things down – it translates complexity. The facts stay the same. The meaning stays the same. Only the vocabulary changes.

Try it with a complex Wikipedia article. Slide from grade 8 down to kindergarten. Watch "approximately" become "about." See "utilize" turn into "use." Notice how the article is still accurate, still informative, just more accessible.

Open Questions

• Should browsers have this built in?
• Could this help ESL learners?
• What's the right balance between simplification and precision?
• How do we handle domain-specific terminology (medical, legal, technical)?

The code is rough but functional. I'd love feedback, especially from educators, accessibility advocates, or anyone working on literacy issues.

Note: This was built in a weekend. The UI is newspaper-themed because I like the aesthetic. The real innovation is the vocabulary ladder algorithm that preserves meaning while adjusting complexity.

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