Assessing French Readability for Adults with Low Literacy: A Global and Local Perspective

This study presents a novel approach to assessing French text readability for adults with low literacy skills, addressing both global (full-text) and local (segment-level) difficulty. We also introduce a dataset of 461 texts annotated using a difficulty scale developed specifically for this population. Using this corpus, we conducted a systematic comparison of key readability modeling approaches, including machine learning techniques based on linguistic variables, fine-tuning of CamemBERT, a hybrid approach combining CamemBERT with linguistic variables, and the use of generative language models (LLMs) to carry out readability assessment at global and local level.