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It is important for people with learning disabilities to take part in all aspects of society, and to have their voices heard. We want to encourage people with learning disabilities to be interested in politics, and especially to vote in the upcoming General Election, which will be held on 4th July. We have been scouring the internet to find resources about elections in Easy Read, and here is some of what we’ve found. We’ve created a free resource about elections, with a summary of the links in this blog. You can find it on our website here. My Vote My Voice The My Vote My Voice campaign is on a mission to encourage people with learning disabilities and autistic people to vote in the 2024 General Election. Because your voice matters. They have produced an online Easy Read quick guide to voting, with information about why and how to vote. They also have Easy Read information about how politics works. You can fill out a short form on their website to get a free badge, to say that you’ve registered to vote. My Vote My Voice say: ‘It’s really important that everyone who can vote, does vote. This is the best way for most people to have a say in the way the country is run.’ They also have pages for carers or support workers, organisations, and elected representatives, with resources to inspire someone with a learning disability and/or autism to use their legal right to vote. Mencap Mencap have a page about elections, with information about how to get more involved in politics. They have joined with My Voice My Vote and worked with them on their Easy Read information. The Government There is also Easy Read information on the Government website about how to register to vote, and different ways to vote: And about the voter registration certificate, which you need if you do not have any photo ID. And a guide they wrote with Mencap, about voting and registering to vote. The Electoral Commission The Electoral Commission have guides on how to register to vote in England, Scotland and Wales: The Electoral Commission have also written a report called Elections for everyone, about registering to vote and voting from the view of someone with a disability. You can read the report on their website: What you can do You can sign the I Need Easy Read petition, asking people to support Easy Read in the UK. Petition - http://change.org/i-need-easy-read And you can ask the candidates in your constituency to sign the pledge to support Easy Read, and display their support on social media. You can direct them to this link to pledge: https://www.ineedeasyread.org/pledge You could also ask the election candidates in your constituency for campaign materials in Easy Read!

Hello from the Easy Read Online team and welcome to this month’s update! I Need Easy Read campaign launched! We were really pleased to support the I Need Easy Read campaign launch at the start of the month at Mencap Cottage House in Crosby. We have been working on this campaign with members of Mencap Liverpool for the past year and it was brilliant to see the launch go so well. You can find out more on the campaign website here: You can keep up to date with the campaign by following the social media channels: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ineedeasyread Twitter: https://twitter.com/ineedeasyread Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ineedeasyread Easy Read and Digital Accessibility We recently published a blog about digital accessibility and how organisations can ensure their digital publications can be read by everyone. It’s important that online documents fully adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) so they can be read by screen readers, which support people with visual impairments. This is a service we offer as part of creating your Easy Read document. You can find out more on the blog page of our website here: Feedback on our Easy Reads from people with learning disabilities An important part of our process of creating Easy Read information is receiving feedback from end users to check how useful (and easy!) the texts really are. We have a cross-section of our documents checked regularly to ensure we are maintaining a high standard of Easy Read that benefits the end user. Our clients can request this service specifically for their document if they would like it to be checked by a group of people with learning disabilities. Last week three of our staff members observed a checking session with a user group, which they found very useful. Petition - Tell more people about Easy Read! As we draw closer to the next general election, the I Need Easy Read campaign has set up a petition asking the new government to ensure that Easy Read is more widely promoted and that organisations follow their legal duty to provide information in accessible formats. Please support the campaign and sign the petition here! Thank you That’s all from us for this month. Thank you to all of the clients we have worked with. It’s been a pleasure to support your work in creating accessible information. As ever, if you need to request a quote for information in Easy Read, you can use our online form: Best wishes, The Easy Read Online team.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a group of people with learning disabilities in the United Kingdom collaborated to make it easier for them to read and understand important information. The group recognised that many documents and pieces of information were written in a way that was difficult for them to understand, and hard to access, and they wanted to change that. Their efforts resulted in the creation of Easy Read information. Easy Read is a method of presenting key information in a simplified format that is easier-to-understand. It uses simple language, clear layout, and pictures to help convey information and support the meaning of the words. This method has been used to create Easy Read versions of a wide variety of documents, such as health leaflets, letters, reports, consultation surveys, contracts, policies and even information on websites. Throughout the 2000s Easy Read information started to become more commonplace. As part of the continued drive to support disabled people to be more independent, living in local communities, Easy Read was recognised as a way to make information more accessible to enable people to do more for themselves. The Equality Act in 2010 introduced a ruling for all organisations to provide information in an accessible way. The Act refers to reasonable adjustments - these are small changes that organisations should make to enable disabled people to take part like everyone else. Easy Read constitutes a reasonable adjustment, it makes information accessible so that people with learning disabilities can understand the things they need to know, or want to find out about. Following the Equality Act 2010, the Accessible Information Standard was introduced. The Standard requires all health and care services to provide accessible communications for service users. This includes providing Easy Read versions of health and care documents so that people with learning disabilities can access important information. The use of Easy Read information in health and care services can help to reduce health inequalities, which is good for everyone. Other legislation includes the United Nations work to make the whole world more inclusive for disabled people. Countries that are part of the United Nations, including the United Kingdom, have made a promise to reduce the barriers that stop disabled people from taking part. This commitment includes making information more accessible for disabled people, like providing Easy Read documents for people with learning disabilities. Easy Read is used in other countries outside the UK. Elsewhere it is called Easy-to-read. Some countries have variations on Easy Read, like Easy English - this uses more simplified text, in sentences of up to 5 or 6 words. In Germany they have a format called ‘Leichte Sprache’ which translates to easy language . It’s generally text-only (without pictures) and doesn’t go as far as Easy Read to breakdown information, but provides a more accessible alternative for people with low literacy. Easy Read is continuing to become more widely produced as a way to communicate information. Some research has questioned how effective Easy Read is, and it’s true that Easy Read does not guarantee comprehension - some people will still need support to understand Easy Read documents, or need alternative formats like video or audio. But for those who have experience of good quality Easy Read information, it is clear how directly it enables people to take part, have more freedom of choice, discover new opportunities and make the most of their lives. The impact of Easy Read in the future will further reduce inequalities so that no one is left behind.

Many people will have heard the terms learning difficulty and learning disability but it can be difficult to know what the difference between the two is. To the uninitiated, learning disability and difficulty may seem like interchangeable terms. However, they have different and specific meanings. Fundamentally the difference between the two terms is the effect of the condition on intellectual ability. Learning difficulties are experienced without any effect of intellectual ability. Learning disabilities have an impact on intellectual ability. Let’s take a closer look at what this means in reality for people who are affected by these conditions. Learning difficulties Learning difficulties is a broad term to describe conditions that will affect a person’s ability to learn in a traditional classroom setting. Learning difficulties are usually diagnosed in childhood, although children and adults can be diagnosed with learning difficulties at any time in their lives. Learning difficulties are usually lifelong conditions. Examples of learning difficulties include: Dyslexia - this is a difficulty with reading and writing fluently. Dyspraxia - this is a difficulty with movement and bodily coordination. This is also called Developmental Coordination Disorder. Dyscalculia - this is a difficulty with understanding numbers and mathematics. ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) - this is a difficulty with regulating behaviour and concentration. There are many other learning difficulties that can be experienced. It is possible for someone to have multiple different learning difficulties. Someone with a learning difficulty will need to learn and take in information in a specialised or adapted way. Their need for this should not be seen as having an intellectual challenge. Support and rights for people with learning difficulties Schools should have trained staff who can support children with learning difficulties so that the learning environment can be adapted to help them learn. Everyone with diagnosed learning difficulties has rights that are laid out in the Equality Act (2010). Under this Act, employers and services must make reasonable adjustments to support the person to fully participate and reach their potential. This includes making information accessible, like providing Easy Read materials. Or, for example, if someone with dyslexia could be given more time to complete a reading or writing task at work. This would be a reasonable adjustment to support them. Learning disabilities Learning disability affects every individual differently. It is often difficult to identify if someone has a learning disability. A learning disability is a lifelong condition that starts before adulthood. It can be defined as: A reduced ability to understand new or difficult information and to learn new skills. A reduced ability to cope and live independently. Having a lasting effect on development. Learning disabilities can be separated into four types: mild, moderate, severe or profound. Mencap is a charity that works to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities. They define learning disabilities as: A reduced intellectual ability and difficulty with everyday activities which affects someone for their whole lives. For example: household tasks, socialising or managing money. Someone with a learning disability may have difficulty with: Remembering basic information, for example their date of birth or address. Understanding and writing text, and filling in forms. Explaining emotional experiences. Understanding and processing new information. Understanding and telling the time, or a chronological order of events. Recognising risks. Recognising signs, numbers or money. Planning and organising activities for themselves. You can hear from people with learning disabilities talk about how they see learning disabilities in this video produced by Mencap. It’s important to remember that someone with a learning disability could also have a learning difficulty. Support and rights for people with learning disabilities People with learning disabilities will need support throughout their life. However, the level and type of support will differ from person to person. Someone with a mild learning disability may only need support with something like applying for a job. Someone with profound learning disabilities may need round the clock care and support with all aspects of their life. As with learning difficulties, learning disability is also covered by the Equality Act (2010). People with learning disabilities can expect the businesses and services they use to make reasonable adjustments to help them participate. For example, someone may need an Easy Read version of an appointment letter, health materials, an agreement or form, a report or information about a consultation so that they can provide feedback. These would be reasonable adjustments. Sources: Mencap: https://www.mencap.org.uk/learning-disability-explained/what-learning-disability The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/learning-disability/current-projects/oliver-mcgowan-mandatory-training-learning-disability-autism NHS: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder-adhd/symptoms/ UK Government: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/reasonable-adjustments-for-people-with-a-learning-disability

This week, from the 15th to the 22nd of May, marks Mental Health Awareness Week. This year, the Mental Health Foundation has designated the theme as ‘anxiety’. For many, this will be a very familiar term and increasing numbers of people are diagnosed with ‘General Anxiety Disorder’ every year. But what do we mean by ‘anxiety’? The NHS describes anxiety as; ‘a feeling of unease, such as worry or fear, that can be mild or severe.’ It is normal for people to feel some level of anxiety throughout their lives. It is natural to feel nervous or worried before an important occasion in your life - this is usually called low-level anxiety. But for some people, those feelings of worry do not leave them and can make living their daily lives very difficult. If your feelings of anxiety do not leave or occur for no reason, or you are experiencing these symptoms, you may wish to see a GP: Feeling restless or worried. Having trouble concentrating or sleeping. Dizziness or heart palpitations. How to deal with low-level anxiety Most people will experience and have to deal with low-level anxiety in their lives. Indeed, the Workplace Health Report from Champion Health [ https://championhealth.co.uk/insights/guides/workplace-health-report ] found that 60% of employees are experiencing anxiety, which rises to 67% for employees aged 16 to 24. The Mental Health Foundation has put together a useful list of tips to deal with feelings of anxiety which you can read in full here: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/public-engagement/mental-health-awareness-week/what-can-we-do-cope-feelings-anxiety Some tips that we find useful are getting out into nature and moving your body. We hope that these tips will help you to deal with any low-level anxiety you might be facing. Sources: https://championhealth.co.uk/insights/anxiety-statistics/#:~:text=60% of employees are experiencing,are seeking mental health support https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/generalised-anxiety-disorder/overview/ https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/public-engagement/mental-health-awareness-week/what-can-we-do-cope-feelings-anxiety

Welcome to the May edition of our newsletter. Here are some of the things we have been up to and some free resources which you can share. What we’ve been up to This month we have worked on Easy Read documents for a variety of organisations including the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England, Ffilm Cymru Wales, Kisharon, and Cornwall Council. We had our quarterly company training day on 25 May, where we discussed a range of topics for improving the Easy Read documents we create, such as: Improvements to our Quality Assurance process. Using AI to aid our translations. Best practice for using icons in our images. During the day we also met with Mencap Liverpool and Sefton members to discuss our shared Ask for Easy Read campaign. Results of the Ask for Easy Read survey The survey to find out how much people know about Easy Read and how to ask for information in Easy Read has now closed. We will be sharing the results in full soon but some highlight facts from the survey were: 39% of people said they did not know how to ask for information in Easy Read. 40% of people said they did not know they had the right to ask services they use for information in Easy Read. This rose to 45% of people who have a learning disability. We think this shows the need for an awareness campaign to let people with learning disabilities and their supporters know about their rights. We will work with our partners at Mencap Liverpool and Sefton to further develop this campaign in the coming months. Mental health awareness resource As part of Mental Health Awareness Week we created an Easy Read document about how to deal with anxiety. You can see a copy here, please feel free to share. You can see the document by clicking the button below. Please feel free to share this document. It is a free document that can be used and enjoyed by everyone. Coming up in June… Learning Disability Awareness Week 19 to 25 June Learning Disability Awareness Week is all about sharing the successes that people with learning disabilities have and busting myths about what living with a learning disability is like. Watch out for our social media posts during the week celebrating success stories from people with learning disabilities. You can find out more about the week from Mencap here - Pride month We wish everyone in the LGBTQIA+ community a happy pride month. We have created this free Easy Read document to explain the acronym to people with learning disabilities. Feel free to share with your contacts. You can see the document by clicking the button below. Please feel free to share this document. It is a free document that can be used and enjoyed by everyone. We hope you have a great month ahead and look forward to working together with you on any future Easy Read projects. Best wishes from the Easy Read Online team

A learning disability is a reduced intellectual ability and difficulty with everyday activities – for example, household tasks, socialising or managing money – which affects someone for their whole life. People with a learning disability tend to take longer to learn and may need support to develop new skills, understand complicated information and interact with other people. Did you know, there are around 200 million people with a learning disability worldwide? Every year the leading charity Mencap runs Learning Disability Week, a week dedicated to making sure the world hears what life is like if you have a learning disability. This year Mencap’s theme is ‘myth busting’, with an aim to smash worldwide misconceptions about what people with a learning disability can do and achieve. Directly highlighting these myths also shines a light on the stigma people with a learning disability face daily. Check out how Ellie Goldstein is smashing myths: What can you do to recognise Learning Disability Week? To show your support for Learning Disability Week you could: Tell people you are supporting #LDWeek on your Social Media - you can find official Learning Disability Week graphics here: www.mencap.org.uk/LDWeek Share inspirational stories told by people with a learning disability, like Abdul’s story: www.mencap.org.uk/blog/abduls-story Start a fundraising campaign at your place of work, Mencap offer a free fundraising pack to help you with this: https://www.mencap.org.uk/blog/learning-disability-week-have-fun-learn-and-raise-funds Take part in campaigns with Mencap: www.mencap.org.uk/get-involved/campaigning How do we support people with learning disabilities at Easy Read Online? We all deserve to interact with the world around us and live our lives in the way that we would like. Information is often vital for us to be able to do this - we use information to make informed decisions about our lives. Some people with learning disabilities might not be able to understand or decipher information in the same way as others, which may mean they lose agency over their lives. In 2010 the government introduced The Equalities Act, which posited that all organisations must make reasonable adjustments to how they work if asked to by a person with a disability. Following this, in 2016 the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) was introduced. AIS is a law that aims to make sure that people who have a disability, impairment or sensory loss are provided health and care information in a way that they can easily read or understand. This means it is now the law for lots of different health and care services, like the NHS and Adult Social Care services to comply with AIS. At Easy Read Online we create accessible information for services who are complying with both the Equalities Act and AIS. Our expert team translate information into easy, jargon-free language and add pictures that aid understanding of the information. To find out more about what we do you can visit our website To find out more about what we do you, please have a look around our website: Sources: www.mencap.org.uk/ www.easy-read-online.co.uk/

Hello from the Easy Read Online team! Here’s a quick update on the Easy Read work we’ve been doing this month. ‘I Need Easy Read’ campaign This month we met up with the group of Mencap Liverpool and Sefton members who have been collaborating with us on this campaign. We are continuing to work on establishing the ‘I Need Easy Read’ campaign. This is a campaign to promote the right to accessible information for people with learning disabilities. We are moving forward with the promotion stage of the campaign and have produced some leaflets and accessibility cards. Please feel free to download and use these or share them with anyone who would benefit from them! We are putting the finishing touches to a shiny new campaign website which will be a place to share information and resources about Easy Read. What we’ve learned from working with people with learning disabilities We regularly involve people with learning disabilities to check our Easy Read documents and discuss best practices for making information more accessible. One of the things we learned this month is in relation to symbols and icons within Easy Read images. 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 we’ve found that symbols and icons can be abstract, because they require the reader to recognise the symbol/icon and to understand the context. We’ve now started to include a small text box beside/above/below any symbols or icons to make them explicitly clear. An upward arrow to emphasise that something will improve now includes the word ‘better’ below it; an arrow that emphasises an increase now includes the word ‘more’ below it etc. This small change has had a largely positive effect on users’ interpretation of the Easy Read information. Spotlight Project: ticket office changes This month we’ve been busy creating lots of Easy Read information about the changes to ticket offices at train stations in England. You may well have heard that large-scale closures of ticket offices are proposed and the consultation about this closes soon. We were pleased to see that many people on social media were asking for Easy Read versions of the consultation information - a sign that Easy Read is increasingly seen as a standard accessibility format. We hope that the Easy Read consultation information has supported more people to engage with the consultation. Thank you That’s all from our Newsletter for this month. We hope you have a good month ahead! As ever, if you need to request a quote for information in Easy Read, you can use our online form:

Hello from the Easy Read Online team! Here’s a quick update on the Easy Read work we’ve been doing this month. National Inclusion Week This week is National Inclusion Week - aimed at encouraging employers to think about ways to improve inclusion in their workplaces. We posted our first video on TikTok as part of this - to share great examples of inclusive work, such as the Easy Read guides at Nottingham Castle. September Spotlight Projects Including women and girls with disabilities in development work We recently worked with Sightsavers on a document that details how they will continue to improve the way they include women and girls with disabilities in their development and humanitarian projects. This is a great step in making sure women and girls with disabilities aren’t left behind in development work. Report for the UN on including persons with disabilities in peacebuilding This month we worked with the United Nations to produce an Easy Read version of their report on how disabled people should be included in peacebuilding. Disabled people often have different perspectives to share on how a country can come together and rebuild after a war. We were very pleased to be able to support the UN with this important piece of work. Have you or someone you know been harmed by valproate or pelvic mesh? The Government is initiating a redress scheme for people who have been directly or indirectly harmed by either: taking valproate or having pelvic surgery that involved the use of pelvic mesh. The Patient Safety Commissioner has been tasked with advising the Government’s redress scheme and thinks your views are an important part of this. If you would like your say in the planning of the redress scheme you can fill in the Patient Safety Commissioner survey here: Coming up in October Black History Month The month of October is Black History Month. We recently worked with South London Gallery to produce a guide to their exhibition ‘Lagos, Peckham, Repeat’ on the connections and shared history between Peckham and Lagos. The exhibition is running until the 29th of October, and you can find out more about it here: Thank you That’s all from us for September. We hope you have a good month ahead! As ever, if you need to request a quote for information in Easy Read, you can use our online form:

Hello from the Easy Read Online team. We hope you’re having a great summer so far! Here are some of the things we’ve been up to this month - along with some Easy Read publications you may find useful. Easy Read - is there a better way? You may remember from our January newsletter that we wanted to carry out more research into the best practices for Easy Read, to better understand what improves users’ interaction with Easy Read information - from content and style to the format it’s provided in. Three of our team have recently concluded some research that: Looked at other existing Easy Read guidance to identify alternative methodologies that we could adopt. Assessed our own Easy Read style and methodology to look at what we can do differently. Tested out all our ideas with people with learning disabilities. As the Easy Read format becomes more widely recognised, more and more materials are being produced. We’d be interested to establish more definitive methodologies that will be helpful to everyone. You can read the full report of what we looked into and found out on our blog, here: Easy Read service for NHS Cheshire and Merseyside We have been working closely with NHS Cheshire and Merseyside to develop an integrated process to produce Easy Read documents on-demand for their patients with communication needs. As part of this work, we provided some online training for their teams last week to introduce our service, explain people’s rights to accessible information and demonstrate the value of Easy Read and how it can help to reduce health inequalities. We look forward to moving forwards with this partnership so that more people with learning disabilities in Cheshire and Merseyside can access information and do more for themselves. Spotlight Project: Unlimited Open Awards This month we were pleased to work with Unlimited, an organisation that champions and supports disabled artists. They have opened their UK and International Open Awards which will support artists to create work and collaborate with artists in the UK and other countries. You can see more information about the awards by clicking here . You can find the Easy Read information about the awards by clicking the button below: Spotlight Project: Period Products consultation in Northern Ireland We were delighted to work with the Northern Ireland Executive to create an Easy Read version of their consultation on the best way to provide free period products to anyone who needs them in Northern Ireland. This is something that the Northern Ireland Assembly made law in 2022. Sláinte to that! We also created a children’s version of the consultation which is another service we can provide. You can see a copy of the Easy Read consultation document here: Easy Read art gallery guide Last month we mentioned the project we worked on with Nottingham Castle to create Easy Read guides for their art gallery exhibition. Meg from the team was able to go and visit the exhibition and see how the Easy Read guides are helping people to engage with the art. Here are some photos of the exhibition: That’s all from us for this month. We hope you have a great rest of the summer and good holidays if you manage to get away in August. Best wishes The Easy Read Online team

Introduction Three of our staff spent 6 months holding fortnightly meetings in a group called 'Easy Read: is there a better way?'. Our goal was to find ways of improving the quality of our Easy Read material. We began by acknowledging that Easy Read in its current form may not be going far enough, or performing well enough, to make information easy for people with learning disabilities to understand. Our group had three stated aims: To look at existing Easy Read guidance, to identify alternative styles and methods that we could adopt. To assess our own Easy Read style and methods to see what we can do differently. To test all our ideas with people with learning disabilities. As our work progressed, so too did our aims. However, the core principles - to look at the ideas of other parties and to analyse our work - remained the same. In the following chapters of this report, we will discuss our progress on each of our aims. Aim 1 - looking at existing Easy Read Guidance There is no shortage of Easy Read Guidance available online, made by a variety of sources including charities, healthcare organisations and Accessible Information organisations. Much of the available guidance makes suggestions that align with our current practice. For instance, most guidance advised Easy Read producers to use: wide margins; left justified text; pictures to the left of writing; a large, clear, sans-serif font; numerals for numbers; short sentences no more than 15 to 20 words long; bullet points for lists and definitions for difficult words. However, some guidance made suggestions that differed from our current ways of working. For instance, some guidance suggested: Using real-life examples of weights - for example, 1 litre is about 3 cans of Coke. Using section headings on every page in that section. Cutting sentences that run over multiple lines at natural pause points in the sentence. For example: The way this sentence is cut is easy to read. (good) The way this sentence is cut is easy to read. (bad) For page numbers, use 1 of 24; 5 of 16 and so on. This means people with a printout know they have all the pages. Text be size 14-16, whereas we use size 18 text. We also found that there is some disagreement over the use of bold words. It is not uncommon for readers to interpret bold words are 'important' rather than 'difficult'. Happily, most difficult words that make it into an Easy Read document are also important. Nevertheless, it is clear that there was some confusion over what exactly the role of bold words is. Some guides recommend a page at the beginning of each document that suggests how a reader can read it - e.g. not all in one go, or with the help of a support worker. We felt that this could be a useful addition to our documents, and worked on developing an opening page that explained: that the document was Easy Read; what Easy Read is for; how a reader might use an Easy Read document; what bold words and links are. In addition to the guidance created by organisations that create Easy Read material, there exists a corpus of academic research into Easy Read. Having completed our survey of online guidance, we undertook a form of literature review of this research, to better understand what we might learn from it. One aim was to find evidence for how different aspects of Easy Read help people with learning disabilities to better understand information. Looking at the available research, some consistent themes began to emerge. Firstly, there was not very much evidence for the benefit of different elements of Easy Read information. For instance, while some research found that pictures helped clarify text, other papers suggested that images could overwhelm readers by causing 'memory overload'. However, some consistent themes emerged: Easy Read tends to work best for people with mild or moderate learning disabilities. Users of Easy Read tend to understand more when they have support to read it. Many of the facets of guidance used in Easy Read Online and other producers of Easy Read information are not rooted in academically tested evidence. They may have been developed in conjunction with people with learning disabilities, but there is no way of knowing how rigorous this development process was. Users of Easy Read consistently self-report positive feelings towards Easy Read options. This is perhaps at odds with the lack of evidence backing up its usefulness but nonetheless points to the real-world value associated with the format. Unfortunately, many of our key questions were not satisfactorily answered by the research. When researchers provided examples of the Easy Read documents they used to test the format, the quality of these documents fell well short of what we would consider to be good Easy Read. Only the broadest elements of Easy Read guidance were tested (e.g. the inclusion or exclusion of pictures). And, as more than one researcher pointed, the overall corpus of research is severely lacking in depth. It is reasonable to question and critique the usefulness of Easy Read. Despite Easy Read Online's obvious conflict of interest, we believe that Easy Read and other accessible formats are defined by their ability to impart complex information to people with learning disabilities, and if they are failing to do that then we must question their necessity. However, we felt, when reading some studies, that the academics somewhat overplayed the belief on the part of Easy Read producers that it is a panacea and will result in a universal, immediate understanding of any and all information. We know this is not the case. We understand the clear fact that many people with learning disabilities will struggle to read Easy Read information without support. Nevertheless, we believe that it can still aid understanding, by foregrounding the most important information, cutting through intimidating walls of text and providing supporters with a simplified bridge to explain information to a person with a learning disability in a more personalised way. Aim 2 - Assessing our own work Our second aim was to look at our own work, to find ways of improving it. We all felt that our work had been steadily getting better over recent years, but we had no way of demonstrating this. Furthermore, we were aware that we occasionally put out work that is not up to the standard to which we aspire. In order to improve this work, we had to understand it. One common problem we identify with our own work is length. We regularly produce lengthy consultations that, we worry, are so overwhelming that no person with a learning disability is likely to complete it. Since such consultations are inherently interactive, we agreed to contact clients to find out if these consultations ever got any responses. We were braced for disappointing results. However, to our pleasant surprise, most clients who responded gave us positive feedback. Typically, Easy Read responses would account for approximately 5% of total consultation responses. When very few responses were received, the client usually would provide an explanation that was out of our hands (i.e. that related to the delivery, not the content of the consultation document). Interestingly, there did not appear to be much correlation between the number of respondents and the length of the consultation. These results should be presented with some caveats. We only spoke to clients who were happy to speak to us - perhaps if the client had received next to no responses, they might have been embarrassed to tell us. Nevertheless, this investigation was heartening. We also identified the possibility of using scoring systems for text. Many writers, in many contexts, use scoring systems to analyse the complexity of a piece of text. It is common, for instance, in advertising and copywriting. The most common scoring system for text is the Flesch-Kincaid score, which gives the complexity of the text on a scale of 1 to 12, corresponding to American school 'grades'. One set of guidance set the ideal Flesch-Kincaid score for Easy Read as 3.78. We began comparing our work to this score. Typically, our work had higher Flesch-Kincaid scores than this, averaging around 7. However, we became frustrated by the drawbacks of the score. It did not account, for instance, for the length of a piece of text. Indeed, it did not account for so many variables that we think about when creating Easy Read that we were unsure if it would be much use trying to bring our scores down. Where the score did lead us, was to create a formula for a different score, one that would better represent the different factors underpinning good Easy Read. We developed a new system, called the Easy Readability Score, that would look at these factors and create a score, ranging from 0 to over 100, that described the quality of Easy Read. It would look at the number of pages, number of words, number of sentences, and the Flesch-Kincaid score. We found that this score was an excellent analytical tool to examine the quality of our work. We made some changes to our documents based on trying to reduce the Easy Readability Score of our documents. It helped identify longer and more complex words to which we do not always pay attention. For instance, we no longer use 'Contents', 'Introduction' or 'For more information' as regular headings, instead using 'What is in this booklet', 'About this booklet' and 'Find out more' respectively. The score allows the process of simplifying information to become almost 'gamified', with producers encouraged to try and improve their score. This process may allow the simplification of information to become an ongoing process, requiring fewer working groups to provoke it. Next steps An issue that we discussed early in this process was that of standards in Easy Read. What links our various enquiries is the lack of common standards governing the quality of Easy Read material. As it stands, anyone can produce a document, slap an 'Easy Read' label on it and charge for the service, regardless of its quality. Competition between providers should drive up standards, but because our direct clients are not people with learning disabilities, we are not incentivised to put them first. Our frustration at this state of affairs underpinned all of our research, from looking at guidance and research to see if our work was up to scratch, to inventing scoring systems to check our work and the work of others. In our final meeting, we discussed the possibility of collaborating with other Easy Read producers to discuss these issues and others. We talked about hosting or supporting a conference, in which creators came together and, perhaps, agreed on standards. Such standards could be backed up by research. If every organisation agreed to them, then a baseline of quality could be assured. This would allow us to do more to put people with learning disabilities back at the centre of what we do. This report has not discussed the Easy Readability Score in great detail, as it is an idea that we are committed to taking further. We will be reaching out to academics to look at the possibility of conducting more research, to expand the body of evidence surrounding Easy Read. The Score could become part of future standards, or it could be used internally. Either way, it will be a useful tool in measuring the quality of Easy Read work that we produce.

Welcome to our June newsletter - it’s been a hot one! Here are some of the things we have worked on this month. We have been very busy at Easy Read Online this month, working on Easy Read documents for a variety of organisations including Stockdales, North Star Housing, West Sussex County Council, Nottingham Castle, the Home Office, the Department for Health and Social Care and the Covid-19 Inquiry. Eid Mubarak Eid Mubarak from the Easy Read Online team to everyone celebrating Eid al-Adha this week. Spotlight project We have been working with Stockdales, a charity that supports children and young adults with learning disabilities in Sale, Greater Manchester. We worked with the charity to create an Easy Read document about their history. It was interesting to learn about how the charity has worked to support people with learning disabilities from the 1950s to today, and how children and young people with disabilities were supported in the past. Something a bit different We usually work on creating complete Easy Read documents but this month there has been a couple of projects that differ from the norm Our brilliant illustrator Danni worked with Zetetick Housing to create an illustration for the front page and centrefold pull-out of their magazine. You can see the completed design here: We worked with the art gallery at Nottingham Castle to create Easy Read versions of the plaques that hang beside the artworks and inform visitors about them. We are really pleased to be part of this initiative and hope that more visitors to the gallery feel informed and included due to the Easy Read information they can read. Coming up in July's Newsletter Disability Pride Month July is Disability Pride Month Disability Pride Month starts conversations and raises awareness among people who are not part of the disabled community on how to be better allies and what they can do in support. You can find out more about Disability Pride Month from Inclusive Employers: We hope you have a great month ahead and look forward to working together with you on any future Easy Read projects. Best wishes from the Easy Read Online team