What is easy read?
Easy read is simplified information for adults with learning disabilities. This includes a huge range of different needs and abilities. GOV.UK encourages local authorities to provide easy read information, particularly for key stages and decisions in someone’s life.
The information should be distilled to just the key elements. We have 12 standard council tax pages; this has been condensed to just one easy read page that includes the key points that are likely to be most relevant to our easy read audience.
As a side note, the guidelines also highlight that easy read can be useful for people with English as a second language, as it is based on a simple, clear image with a short sentence next to it. Here’s an example from the bins and recycling page:
Easy read landing page
We’ve launched with an easy read landing page. This includes:
We also have 2 pages that relate specifically to adults with learning disabilities – Approaching adulthood and Shared Lives – and we have more of these to build.
On relevant standard pages, we’ve linked to these using our ‘related links’.
As part of phase 2, we’ve designed a new easy read button:
This is in development to sit next to our current ‘listen’ button which sits at the top of our pages.
Work in progress
We’re really pleased to share the start of this project, which is a work in progress.
We have come across some difficult questions which are not completely resolved. For example, for marriages and civil partnerships, we’ve moved away from pictures of people to pictures of rings, so that we don’t exclude anyone. At the same time, I can’t help feeling that a picture of rings is not that helpful. It’s correct, but is it helpful?
Some user testing could very well help with questions like these and we’ll be looking to get feedback from real users over the next few months.
Bracknell Forest Digital Services 
One thought on “Easy read content now available”