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Happy Easter from the Easy Read Online team! Welcome to this month’s update. March’s Highlight Easy Read Projects We have been working on some incredibly important criminal justice documents this month for: All of the documents feature crucial information, and people with learning disabilities must also be afforded the opportunity to read, understand and interact with this information. It would be great to see more government departments offering Easy Read versions of their information! A Naidex Day Out On the 21st the whole Easy Read Online team went to this year's Naidex exhibition at the NEC Birmingham! The day was filled with inspirational talks, innovative products and fun activities. We came away from the exhibition even more committed to, and enthusiastic about, accessibility. A personal favourite amongst our team members was a very special LIVE recording of the fantastic People First Podcast - featuring special guest Brooke Millhouse. Are you an arts organisation? Are you part of an arts organisation that is based in the West Midlands? The West Midlands Combined Authority is offering grants to arts organisations that are currently working on an arts project with a group in another country. We have created some handy Easy Read information about these grants, which you can find on their website! Wrap Up That’s all from us this month - a big thanks to all the clients we have worked with, we have thoroughly enjoyed supporting you to create accessible information. If you would like to request a quote for information in Easy Read, you can use our online form: Best wishes, The Easy Read Online team.

Hello from the Easy Read Online team and welcome to this month’s update. February’s highlight projects Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights We were pleased to work with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on a piece of work around sharing good practices in supporting disabled people to participate in their communities. We hope that this valuable piece of work can support people to become more involved with their communities around the world. Queen’s Nursing Institute We have also been supporting the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) to produce an Easy Read version of their Community Learning Disability Nursing Standards. The Standards are for nurses who give local community and home care to people with a learning disability. The Easy Read version of the Standards will help people with a learning disability to understand the level of care they can expect to receive. The National Lottery We have worked with the National Lottery on various projects and most recently we’re producing an Easy Read version of their Climate Action Fund application pack. The Easy Read pack will make the application process more accessible to people around the UK who want to apply for funding towards their projects that aim to tackle climate change. Free content! Pharmacy First explainer Last week we published an Easy Read explainer about the government’s new scheme, Pharmacy First. This is a way for people to get treatment for some illnesses at the pharmacy without having to get a prescription from the GP. You can see the Easy Read here - feel free to share! Welcome to the newest member of our team A warm welcome to Victoria who joined the team this month as a technical writer. She has quickly picked up the Easy Read ropes and recently completed her first document for the Health Research Authority. Welcome to the team Victoria! Our team has grown quickly over the last 6 months and we’re now eleven strong, with another new member set to join the ranks later in March! You can read more about the full team on our website: I Need Easy Read campaign Earlier this month we met with the I Need Easy Read campaign group at Mencap Liverpool and Sefton to talk about launching the campaign and raising its profile. Watch this space! Our campaign website is now live and you can have a look 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 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

You can see Easy Read information about the Learning Disability Register from Mencap here: The Learning Disability Register is a list of people who have learning disabilities. It is kept locally, by individual GP practices. The NHS requires every GP practice to keep a list of their patients who have a learning disability - and this is the Learning Disability Register. People with learning disabilities are more likely to face health inequalities, including having poorer physical and mental health than people without a learning disability. A lack of access to the right knowledge, care and support leads to people with a learning disability generally living shorter lives than the average population and having inadequate support from health and care services. One way that the NHS tries to tackle this is by offering an annual health check to everyone over the age of 14 who is on the Learning Disability Register. This helps to find out any problems that someone might have early on, so they can be treated. It also provides a chance for the doctor to understand any adjustments that the patient might need. A health action plan can be requested at an annual health check, which will advise about how someone can live more healthily. It can also include ways that the doctor’s surgery will support someone to be fully involved in their healthcare. The GP surgery is required to make reasonable adjustments to support people on the Learning Disability Register. This might be a quieter place to wait for an appointment at the surgery, or having appointments at certain times of day. Getting health information in Easy Read is another reasonable adjustment that can be requested. Another benefit of being on the Learning Disability Register is that you will be contacted for any vaccinations that you might need, like getting the free flu or Covid-19 jabs. How to join the Learning Disability Register If you or someone you know would like to join the Learning Disability Register, you should first talk to your doctor’s surgery. You may need to make an appointment to talk about your needs before you join the Learning Disability Register. Mencap have produced an Easy Read guide on how to join the Learning Disability Register: You could also use this Easy Read letter to tell your doctor’s surgery what support you need: Sources: Mencap; https://www.mencap.org.uk/advice-and-support/health/learning-disability-register NHS: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/learning-disabilities/annual-health-checks/ Learning Disability Matters: https://learningdisabilitymatters.co.uk/annual-health-checks-gp-learning-disability-registers/ https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/improving-identification-of-people-with-a-learning-disability-guidance-for-general-practice.pdf https://www.unitedresponse.org.uk/resource/the-learning-disability-register-how-to-sign-up-and-why-you-should/

Hello from the Easy Read Online team! We hope you are well and getting ready for the festive break! Here’s the last update from us at Easy Read Online for 2023. Some highlight projects we have worked on this year Rail ticket office consultation In the summer, we were able to support the work of several rail companies as they consulted on changes to ticket offices in England. This included quickly turning around key consultation documents which enabled more people to fully engage with the consultation. We then supported Transport Focus with an Easy Read version of their report on the consultation and outcomes. You can read the report here: United Nations disability inclusion strategy progress report This strategy aims to make sure disabled people are fully included in the work of the UN and provide an example for member nations. We were delighted to support the UN’s work on this important strategy. You can see the Easy Read report here: NHS England We have supported NHS England with many documents this year relating to their merger, and helping members of their staff to navigate the changes. This is part of our ongoing contract with NHS England. Feedback from clients UN Disability Inclusion Strategy Report We are always pleased to hear from clients about how we have supported them in creating accessible information (And how we could do better!). We were really pleased to hear this positive feedback from officers at Bristol City Council: Feedback on our work from people with learning disabilities A group of people with learning disabilities at Mencap Liverpool and Sefton regularly review examples of our work to check that the documents are clear and accessible to them. This is a key part of creating high-quality Easy Read documents. We also meet with the group regularly to discuss accessible information and best practices. Here is some of the feedback we’ve received this year: “Really clear and informative document that enabled the group to have a good discussion around health inequalities.” “Everyone found the document interesting and really liked how the original quotes were kept in as it made it feel more authentic and that they were getting a real point of view, the trickier words in bold with explanations underneath were very helpful too. Overall, a really good clear document!” “Overall - Simple. clear pictures that stand out, bullet points used well.” “We liked the use of bold writing and not too much text in one place.” “There was a lot of information in this document but it was broken down well and made manageable for everyone to understand.” We have also made some changes to our documents based on their feedback over the year, including: Adding text captions to icons to make them clearer in images. Adding a page at the start of documents which explains what Easy Read is and the features they will encounter. A big thank you to the coordinators and members at Mencap Liverpool and Sefton for their continued help! Welcome to the newest member of our team A warm welcome to Presley who recently joined the team as our web-accessibility support. He has been helping to prepare and remediate PDFs to make them accessible and compliant with the WCAG 2.1 web accessibility standard. Office shut down A quick reminder that our office will be closed for the festive period from 5pm on Wednesday 20th December until 9am on Wednesday 3rd January. Thank you That’s all from us for this year. Thank you to all of the clients we have worked with, it’s been a pleasure to support your work in creating accessible information. We hope you have a restful break and wish you the best for 2024! 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

Happy Halloween from the Easy Read Online team! Here’s a roundup of all the work we’ve done in the last month… Awareness in October October saw many impactful awareness events and global campaigns, all united in their mission to speak up on important issues. Notable for Easy Read Online was #WorldMentalHealthDay, which we actively express our solidarity with. We believe equal access to information plays a pivotal role in connecting people with disabilities with the vital support needed to improve their mental health. Our Easy Read translation of many documents related to mental health services enables people with learning disabilities to find and understand the help they need. Spotlight Projects UN Disability Inclusion Strategy Report In 2019, the United Nations shared its Disability Inclusion Strategy - a policy and accountability framework that details how the UN will include people with disabilities in its workforce and all pillars of its work. In October, we were delighted to translate the annual strategy report into Easy Read for the 4th time. The Easy Read report is an effective way of accessibly sharing progress, holding true to the values of the strategy. You can check out the report here: Ofsted Report In October we also produced an important Easy Read report for Ofsted which outlines the key results from their consultation with children in social care. The report highlights a significant improvement in the safety of children and young people in their social care environment, including those with extra educational needs. You can read the report here: The I Need Easy Read Campaign The "I Need Easy Read Campaign" group recently had a productive meeting with our co-producers at Mencap, who gave us feedback on our campaign website - which we promptly actioned! As a result, our website has undergone some accessibility changes and is now even available in the Welsh language. You can explore these updates on our campaign website: Following a positive reception from the public when sharing our "I Need Easy Read" leaflets, our campaign's next steps include widening our outreach and exploring new ways of raising campaign awareness, such as working with local radio stations. Easy Read Development We enthusiastically welcomed Karen White as an Easy Read technical writer to our team this month. Karen has fast become an invaluable member of the group, bringing fresh ideas and new outlooks which are already filtering into our work processes and improving them. On Wednesday 8th November we will be closed for a team training day. We will be looking at potential improvements to our Easy Read work, such as reviewing and critiquing our document design. We will also assess our internal work systems, which will involve an ‘Overcoming Obstacles’ workshop and an evaluation of our company values. Thank you That’s all from us for this month. We wish you a good November! If you would like us to produce Easy Read for your organisation you can request a quote for information here:

This week is National Hate Crime Awareness Week. Many councils and organisations will write: ⏺ Reports about what they are doing to tackle Hate Crime. ⏺ Strategies that set out their plans to stop Hate Crime. ⏺ Leaflets and information to raise awareness of Hate Crime; and signpost victims to get the right support. If your organisation is providing information related to Hate Crime, have you considered producing versions in Easy Read? Easy Read will make the information easier to understand and more accessible to people with leaning disabilities and others who have difficulty with standard information. Hertfordshire County Council have published some Easy Read information about Hate Crime on their website: #NationalHCAW#HateCrime#HateCrimes#EasyRead#LearningDisabilities

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! 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. 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

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/