The BANES CIC Step By Step Guide to Easy Read Information Good Easy Read information is really important and is more than just putting some pictures on a piece of paper, or turning the writing into bullet points. This is our Step By Step guide and hope it helps. 1. Think about the text Look at the information that you need to make easier to understand. Think about what the important messages in the text are, and then think about and find simple words that help to make it easier to understand. If there is jargon or abbreviations take it out and use words we understand OR explain what the abbreviations mean.
Don t give us too much information BUT don t take away too much either, we still need to be able to understand what the document is saying and why. Remember if we can read we need words that are familiar and you need to make sure you spell them right If we can t read someone can read it to us, but we still need to understand the words. 2. Page Layout We understand Easy Read information best when the pages look familiar to us. So think about the page and put your text on the right hand side and leave space on the left for pictures that support the words. FONT FONT 3. Text and Font There are some Fonts that are harder to read than others these are the ones with an a written like this a as well as Fonts which are very curly or fancy.
Century Gothic Comic Sans We like Century Gothic or Comic Sans so would suggest you try to use one of these. 18 20 We need the text to be Big enough for us to read. We suggest a Font size of 18 or 20. 4. Pictures Pictures can really help us to understand information and support the words. BUT the pictures only act like a prompt to show us what the words are about, so don t try to tell the whole story with pictures as this doesn t work. We will all read pictures in a different way so it is really important that you always use the same picture to say the same thing. It is really confusing if you mix pictures up or are not consistent. Photographs can really help if they are of specific people or places but sometimes when people use photographs we are not sure if we are supposed to know the person or not. So think carefully about what the
photograph is showing us and always check if this is the right image to help us understand the information. We prefer line drawings and CHANGE is our favourite resource for finding pictures. People often like to make their pictures colourful to make the document look more interesting this is ok but it is not as important as having the right pictures and words. If you can t find a good picture you can try drawing one. 5. Making it happen Depending on your skills on a computer there are different ways to get started you might like to make a table with 2 boxes, one for the words and one for the pictures and add another row for each different part of the information You may prefer to make a grid on your computer to make sure you can set the page up to get the words and pictures in the right place or you can just add a text
box to the left hand side of the page to put the pictures in. Space the text clearly and make sure you show where you are starting a new piece of information. You can use bold to highlight information to show it is important and you can underline information to show it is the start of new information. That means CIC means Community Interest Company It is also helpful if you are using a word people might not understand to give an explanation of the words either alongside the text or in a small box after that piece of text. Try not to put too many things in CAPITAL LETTERS as this is not so easy to read. 6. Check it out. If you are not sure if your information works then check it out with people with learning disabilities or ask the CIC to have a look at it for you. We hope this helps