Terms & conditions in plain language with max 65-character line length
Why it matters
Dense legalese and unconstrained line lengths push readers past the comprehension threshold, so users click through Terms they never actually parsed. For financial products, that failure mode matters under CFPB UDAAP guidance and state consumer-protection statutes: regulators and plaintiffs treat unreadable disclosures as effectively absent, which undermines the enforceability of indemnity, arbitration, and limitation-of-liability clauses. The content-integrity and user-experience taxons both apply — jargon-heavy paragraphs running 120 characters wide also hurt accessibility for low-vision and cognitively impaired users covered by WCAG 2.2.
Severity rationale
High because unenforceable Terms expose the business to regulatory action and invalidated liability protections during disputes.
Remediation
Rewrite app/terms/page.tsx with a 65ch width constraint, swap every unexplained legal term for its plain-English equivalent, and cap paragraphs at five sentences under H2 section headers. Wrap the body in a container with style={{ maxWidth: '65ch' }} so lines stay between 50 and 70 characters:
<div style={{ maxWidth: '65ch' }}>
<h2>Use License</h2>
<p>We grant you a personal, non-exclusive license to use the service.</p>
</div>
DetectionPro
The detection method for this pattern is part of AuditBuffet Pro.
The full method (what to look for, pass and fail conditions, and how results get reported) ships inside the Regulatory Disclosure Audit. The pattern definition, severity rationale, and remediation remain openly licensed under CC-BY-4.0.
Taxons
History
- 2026-04-18·v1.0.0·Initial import from finserv-disclosure·automated