How end-user voices shape our Easy Read documents

Becky
2 days ago
3 min read

Photograph of the Easy Read checking team in a meeting room at Liverpool Mencap Cottage.

For more than a decade, a group of people with learning disabilities at Mencap Liverpool and Sefton have been regularly reviewing examples of our Easy Read documents to check if they are up to scratch.

The key to creating high-quality Easy Read documents is working with end-users, so their feedback has played a huge role in shaping our work. Here are some of the things we’ve learned from these sessions.

Symbols

We often add symbols or icons to an image to emphasise the meaning of part of the sentence. For example, an upward arrow to emphasise that something will ‘improve’, or ‘increase’.

But a couple of years ago, some feedback from our user group showed that symbols and icons can be too abstract - an absolute no-go for Easy Read documents! Without extra context, these symbols may be confusing or misleading to some readers.

In response to this feedback, we started including text alongside any symbols or icons to give context and make the meaning clearer. For example, if we want to show that something is increasing, we will add an arrow with a small textbox underneath, saying “more”.

Some examples of symbols we use in documents. An arrow pointing upwards with a box that has 'more' written in it. An arrow pointing downwards with a bow that has 'Less' written in it. Two arrows in a circle shape with 'change' written in the middle. A Shield with the word 'safe' written on it.

We found that this small change helped people to understand Easy Read information better. So we’ve been doing it ever since!

Adding an Easy Read explainer page

A screenshot of the Easy Read explainer page from our documents.

Sometimes, feedback from users will prompt us to make bigger changes.

While lots of people already know about Easy Read, it’s still unfamiliar to many, including some people with a learning disability or learning difficulty. So, following some feedback from users, we decided to add an Easy Read explainer page at the beginning of all our documents.

This page explains what Easy Read is and the features readers will encounter, like bolded words, definitions and links. This extra information can help make Easy Read documents easier to understand, especially for readers who are new to the format.

Settling debates

While we usually reach a consensus on how to improve Easy Read documents, we occasionally butt heads on which ideas would be best. That’s where the expertise of the user group comes in handy!

For example, earlier this year, we discussed speech bubbles in Easy Read images. Should we use circular or oval speech bubbles? Or would it be better to use a more rectangular shape? Or does it even matter to readers?

We put this to the test by showing the user group some examples of different speech bubbles and asking which they liked best. Overall, they said they were big fans of speech bubbles in general, but they preferred oval and rectangular speech bubbles over circular ones, which could make the text look a little squashed.

Since then, we’ve used circular speech bubbles less often, instead opting for shapes that make text the easiest to read.

Speech bubbles in different shapes and a green tick.

Putting end-user voices at the heart of our work

A hand clicking a button that has 'our services' written on it.

While many of these changes may seem small, they’ve added up over the years. The real Easy Read experts are people with lived experience, and their points of view are a vital part of what makes Easy Read accessible.

If you would like your Easy Read document to be checked by a group of people with learning disabilities, you can ask us for this service as an optional add-on. Doing this can help ensure that your document benefits the end user as much as possible.