The need for easy read?

The need for easy read come from the disability equality duty which states that publics services must actively promote equality of opportunity for disabled people and eliminate any discrimination. This means that public services should provide information in a format people can understand.

For people with Learning disabilities this would mean providing the information using the easy read format, helping them to get better access to information, living a more independent lives.

Easy read on the web

The Disability Equality Duty has help to push the use of Easy Read Publications for people with Learning Disabilities, and because of this the public sector has started to include Easy Read publications on the web. As part of this investigation, a review on how many councils in the UK that provided easy read content has been conducted.

This investigation looked at 434 councils in the UK and has shown that over 50% of councils don’t provide a form of Easy Read documentation on their website. Although, it was also found that around 45% of councils do provide Easy Read content as a downloadable document (e.g. PDF) with only 3% of them councils providing a website in the easy read format.

Number of councils that I investigated which provide Easy Read publications on the web (Investigation was conducted in November 2013)

Results

The results of this investigation has shown how many councils have provided Easy Read publications on the web, and more importantly how many provide an Easy Read website. This shows that with the right tools, 45% of the UK’s councils could build a dedicated site or webpage based on the Easy Read structure as well as offering the content as a downloadable file.

Advantages of using the web

Using the web to display easy read means the user won’t require a plug-in or specialised software to view, except a web browser which is normally comes preinstalled on modern operating systems.

By using downloads, such as a pdf or word document to present information makes the information less accessible to users who require assistive technology to interpret the information. For Example; Screen Readers. If the councils were to provide the information as a website or page then more people could access the information.