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February Easy Read Newsletter

Picture of Meg By  Meg  ·  3 minute read

As we settle into 2025, we've already been busy creating exciting documents and contributing to impactful projects. We can't wait to share them with you!

Collaborating with Mencap

Photograph of Easy Read Online employees and Liverpool Menace Group sat around a table.

In January, we spoke a lot about how we wanted to progress through 2025 as a company, and on our social media, we highlighted our company’s New Year’s resolutions. Two key commitments were:

  • Continuing to collaborate with experts with lived experience to ensure our Easy Read materials meet real needs and make a meaningful impact.
  • Exploring new and creative ways of working to make every project as accessible and inclusive as possible.

In February, we put these commitments into action by partnering with Mencap Liverpool & Sefton to improve how we use images in our Easy Read documents. We designed an Easy Read activity that Mencap members with lived experience participated in, reviewing and critiquing our image elements. Their feedback was invaluable in identifying what was accessible and what needed improvement.

As a result of this collaboration, we’ve made key updates:

✔️ Larger images – Small image elements are now bigger for better accessibility.

✔️ Clearer text – Any text within images will now be at least 14pt font size for easier reading.

✔️ Simplified visuals – We will now aim to use no more than two elements per image to enhance clarity.

We’re proud that this process has helped to make our Easy Read documents even better for those who use them. Looking ahead, we’ll continue to collaborate like this throughout 2025, making sure accessibility remains at the heart of everything we do.

A spotlight on Digital Rights and Inclusion

Illustrations of a young woman showing something to an older man on an iPad screen.

Last month, we noticed recurring themes in the Easy Read documents we’ve been commissioned to create: digital rights and digital inclusion.

We are currently working on Easy Read documents for:

  • The United Nations – Translating the report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: "Rights of Persons with Disabilities and Digital Technologies and Devices, Including Assistive Technologies.”
  • The UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology – Creating an Easy Read version of their “Digital Inclusion Action Plan”. You can read it here.

In today's world, we use digital technology for many things, so it must be accessible to everyone. Without accessibility, some groups of people may be left behind. Disabled people are more likely to face barriers when using technology, even though it is often an important part of their daily lives. This could be anything from advanced tools like Brain-Computer Interfaces to simple tasks like ordering food online when going to a shop is challenging.

It’s encouraging to see major organisations:

✔️ Prioritising digital inclusion by actively working to ensure disabled people can access the technology they need.

✔️ Sharing information about their digital inclusion work in Easy Read, making sure disabled people can engage with information and policy that directly affects them.

To learn more about digital accessibility and how we integrate it into our work, check out our blog post:

 

The Impact of Easy Read

The Department of Health and Social Care Logo and an illustration of an iPad with the Easy Read document on the screen.

Last year, we partnered with the UK Government’s Department of Health and Social Care to produce Easy Read materials about their efforts to improve the lives of people living with ME/CFS. This included Easy Read versions of their Delivery Plan and Delivery Plan Consultation. You can access the Easy Read Delivery Plan here.

This month, we’ve been commissioned to create an Easy Read version of the Consultation Outcome Report. While working on this, we discovered that an incredible 244 consultation responses were submitted using the Easy Read version. We were thrilled to learn that our work enabled 244 people to have their voices heard and contribute to meaningful change for those living with ME/CFS.

Even more importantly, the majority of these responses came from people who have or think they have ME/CFS, meaning we helped those directly affected engage in a process that impacted them.

This is a powerful example of why Easy Read matters. If your organisation is looking to make consultations more inclusive and ensure disabled people’s voices are heard, you can learn more about getting your consultations in Easy Read here: 

 

That’s all from us this month! As always, thank you to all of the clients we have worked with. It’s been a pleasure to support you in creating accessible information. If you need to request a quote for information in Easy Read, you can use our online form: