Make it Easy A guide to preparing Easy to Read information
Who wrote this guide?
The Accessible Information Working Group. This is a group of Speech and Language Therapists working in disability services, hospitals and the HSE in Ireland. People from Inclusion Ireland and the National Federation of Voluntary Bodies are also part of this group. The group looked at research about making information easy for people with communication difficulties to understand.
The research was from Ireland and other parts of the world.
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What does the guide do?
This guide tells you why easy to read information is important.
It tells you the best way to make easy to read information.
It tells you the different tools you can use, for example drawing, symbols, video clips and websites.
It tells you how staff and services can support people who prefer easy to read information.
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Important things in the Easy to Read guidelines If you are using these guidelines, you should talk about them with the people who use your service.
You should make sure that they agree with the guidelines.
Easy to read information should be made with or by the people who use it.
Different people will need different types of information. Some people prefer written information. Some people like pictures. Some prefer to watch DVDs or listen to CDs. Some people would prefer to have information read out to them by someone who knows them well.
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You should always know: o What information you want to share? o Who needs to have this information?
You must think about: o Paper o Font o Colour o Using pictures o The words and sentences you use o The amount of information on each page o The layout of each page.
Peamount Services and St. Michael’s House made this leaflet with advice from the Information Transformers group. The symbols used are from the Boardmaker and Photosymbols resources. 4