Category: Policy and Policy Development

What is Easy Read and who needs it?

page from Access Easy English on COVID. Writing for readers.
  Example of Easy English

Easy Read is a good example of how less is more. But conveying messages in fewer words is more difficult than writing more words. Easy Read is for people with low levels of literacy. It’s mostly used for essential information such as health alerts and legal terms and conditions. Writing with minimal words is a skillset of its own. It’s not easy. But it does make you think about what you really need or want to say.

Proficient readers can use Easy Read versions to get the take-home message quickly and easily. That’s also why it’s universal design – it’s for everyone. However, Easy Read is not the same as Easy English – the example in the image. It has even fewer words and focuses on actions not just information. Cathy Basterfield says that Easy Read is not simple enough for some people and explains this in a simple poster analysing the difference

Easy Read not the same as plain English or plain language. Complex documents such as research reports are beginning to include a plain language summary. However, these require an average level of literacy. They are usually presented as a paragraph or a list of sentences in dot points. Easy English drills down further to the key words and concepts. The techniques include:

      • a lot of white space
      • directly relevant illustrations (not photos) to convey the meaning of the text
      • short words and sentences
      • minimal punctuation
      • positive phrasing
      • bullets to separate items in a list. 

Editors can learn from Easy English

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading blog has a more detailed article. It summarises Cathy Basterfield’s presentation at their annual conference. She shows how editorial professionals can learn from Easy English. 

Blog writer, Anna Baildon, said she learned a lot from the session and had her assumptions challenged. She said she could see “the links to plain English but it goes further”. The headlines she remembers are:

      • It’s hard to write in Easy English
      • Access to written information should not be a reading test. It should be enabling
      • Unpacking the language so the meaning becomes accessible.
      • Access to information is a right. ‘Access’ means that a person reads, understands and knows what they can do.

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading has a guide to Editing in Plain English. 

Many people need it

More than 40% of the population has low literacy skills. In some remote parts of Australia and in institutions it is higher than this. There are several reasons why so many Australians need information in easy to understand formats:

– acquired disabilities
– lifelong disabilities
– poor educational outcomes
– psychiatric or mental illness
– dyslexia
– early school leavers
– older people
– different cultural backgrounds
– hearing impaired and/or people from the Deaf community

Accessibility and universal design needs to be considered at the outset of any project, not as an afterthought. Information formats such as brochures and websites are no exception. Some important government documents include an Easy Read version, but this is still rare. 

Cathy Basterfield has pioneered much of the work on Easy English in Australia. People with high level literacy skills can grasp the key points with little effort. And there are times when people with good literacy skills need help. For example, the stress of a court hearing can temporarily affect one’s reading skills and level of understanding. 

Cathy Basterfield presented a paper on this topic at the Australian Universal Design Conference, UD2021. There is a related post on choice of typeface or font for easy reading. Cathy has an Easy English blogsite that explains more. She did a lot of work for COVID-19 too. 

There is an Easy Read version of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.  The Bumpy Road website is a good example of Cathy’s work for interacting with the justice system. 

Standard for accessible standards

Emily Steel pointing to the 11 Goals of the Guide on the presentation slide.All standards should ensure they meet the goals of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. So there is a Standard for developing Standards documents to be inclusive, accessible and universally designed. ISO Guide 71 shows how to do this. On day two of UD2021 Conference, Emily Steel explained how the international Standard for accessible Standards documents. 

The international standard has done all the thinking for us. The document guides standards committees as they write and update standards for their specific industry or profession. It is also useful for any committee developing guides or standards for accessibility and universal design. So, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. 

The Guide’s use of the the term “accessibility” relates closely to universal design. “The extent to which products, systems, services, environments and facilities can be used by people from a population with the widest range of characteristics and capabilities to achieve a specified goal in a specified context of use”. 

ISO Guide 71 Accessibility Goals

The Guide has two main parts. The first describes user needs and 11 accessibility goals. These are similar to the 8 Goals of Universal Design. The second describes human characteristics and abilities, and design considerations. 

      1. Suitability for the widest range of users
      2. Conformity with user expectations
      3. Support for individualisation
      4. Approachability
      5. Perceivability
      6. Understandability
      7. Controllability
      8. Usability
      9. Error tolerance
      10. Equitable use
      11. Compatibility with other systems. 

Guide 71 was adapted by the European standards authority and is titled, CEN-CENELEC Guide 6. It is basically the same information. You can see a previous post about this document. 

There is also an Accessibility Masterlist by Gregg Vanderheiden. It’s a collaborative resource for understanding access features in digital applications. Also worth a look.

 

Ageing in Place vs Aged Care: The Costs

Three stacks of coins sit alongside a wooden cut-out of a house shape.Most people want to stay in their own homes rather than go to an aged care institution. The Royal Commission into Aged Care report confirmed this. And the obvious follows – it’s also beneficial for governments because the costs of home care are less than institutional care. But are our homes designed to support care at home? According to an AHURI Brief, on average, someone on a home support program costs the Government around $3,900 per year. The cost of a person living in residential care costs around $69,000 a year. These figures are the annual ongoing cost per person. The cost of a home care package ranges from $9,000 a year to $52,000 per year depending on the level of support.  The AHURI Brief includes a chart comparing the various costs of of the different packages and support against the cost of residential care. Another cost that could be reduced is the need for home modifications. Not only can people stay home more safely, care hours are also reduced. In rental accommodation such modifications can be denied by the landlord. That will lead to early entry into an institution.  The AHURI Brief concludes, “We note that there is currently no discernible connection between the Australian Government aged care program and any Australian or State or Territory Government housing program. This must change.” The title of the AHURI Brief is, Better supporting older Australians to age in place.  AHURI (Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute) is a national independent research network. AHURI’s work informs policy about housing and urban development. They have not engaged with the proposed reforms to the National Construction Code for improved accessibility in all new housing.    

Are institutions still the way to go for aged care?

An older woman using a walking cane walks over a paved section towards the roadway. Are institutions still the way to go?Why is it still OK for older people to be “put” in aged care institutions? We closed such places for people with disability and mental health conditions last century. There will still be a need for some people to receive care in a place that is not their home. But the vast majority could be better served with homes and neighbourhoods designed to support them. So, are institutions still the way to go for aged care? The Conversation has an article that discusses this issue arguing it’s time to support healthy ageing in place. “Age-friendly places aren’t just good for older people. They also support the needs of children, people with a disability and everyone else in a community.” The article includes the well-established global age-friendly framework devised by the WHO many years ago. It is still relevant today. As the authors say, the WHO framework covers the essential ingredients of liveable communities. And it supports well-being for all.  The title of the article is, Aged care isn’t working, but we can create neighbourhoods to support healthy ageing in place.   A previous post, Ageing in the right place, has links to more on this topic outlining alternatives to aged care institutions.

Disability and Planning Research

A book and notepad lay open on a desk in a library.Planning research has not yet evolved to include disability perspectives. Is it because the medical model of disability still prevails? Or is it mistakenly believed that disability is not a design issue? Some might say it’s because the needs of people with disability are fragmented across government departments. Practitioners in the planning field are required to engage with communities, but it seems the researchers are not keeping up. 

Two Canadian researchers took a look at the situation. A search of five prominent planning journals showed that people with disability largely remain invisible. The researchers found just 36 articles – most of which come from the US and the UK. Only 20 had people with disability as the central topic. 

The authors describe the content of the papers that go back as far as 1916. Attitudes towards people with disability clearly changed over the years but including them in research did not. Papers that did mention people with disability generally added them to a list of other groups considered vulnerable or marginalised. 

The paper concludes:

“Planning researchers and practitioners, therefore, must continue to question what knowledge, assumptions, and biases we may have toward PWD and experiences of disability that manifest through our environment. More broadly, planning scholarship can be strengthened by continuous questioning of self—on the processes through which certain knowledge is produced or a pursuit of certain knowledge is prioritised within the discipline. The development of critical discourse focusing on PWD can be a vehicle for such self-reflection.

The title of the article is, The Precarious Absence of Disability Perspectives in Planning Research. It is open access on cogitation press website, or you can download directly. 

Digital transitioning requires mainstream accessibility

Front cover of the ICT report.COVID has revealed our reliance communicating online and via social media. That’s why European countries are getting together to improve the accessibility of all digital services. The digital world has to be accessible to all. It is also part of the Sustainable Development Goals and “leave no-one behind”. That’s why digital transitioning requires mainstream accessibility.

The International Telecommunication Union has launched its ICT accessibility assessment for the Europe region. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of ICT accessibility. The report is designed to provide ITU members and stakeholders from the ITU Europe region with a holistic view of ICT accessibility requirements, the implementation status of ICT accessibility laws, regulations, policies and institutional frameworks, and with good practices and recommendations. Accessibility for all, including ICT is now a top priority.

A magazine article in Mirage titled, Accessible Europe 2021: Making ICTs accessible to all, provides an overview of the assessment report. By 2023 the ITU wants 90% of digital services to have the “seal of usability and accessibility”. This is part of the Accessible Europe project. 

 

Videos more effective than policy

A brightly coloured film strip with the word Video on it.Policy is often seen as the way to make change. But when it comes to being inclusive it hasn’t worked very well. If policies, codes and papers are not accessible to all stakeholders, how can we create inclusion? Janice Rieger says videos are more effective than policy.

The title of her short paper and workshop is, Reframing Universal Design: Creating Short Videos for Inclusion. Her research provides insights on how videos travel and reach different audiences. This results in a significant impact and enacted change and informed policy. Dr Rieger concludes that “video impacts more than policies, codes and papers ever can”. 

Here is an extract from her paper:

“Video is a visceral medium, offering the opportunity to reframe universal design practice and education. It captures movements and can be co-created with people with disabilities. Videos co-created for inclusion encourage detailed and rich embodied knowledge and experiences because information is prompted by association with one’s surroundings. Significantly, videos have the capacity to excavate personalized knowledge of those with different abilities and uncover systems of exclusion that are often hidden or naturalized, and shamedly rendered invisible through policies, codes and papers.”

In a short video titled, Wandering on the Braille Trail, Sarah Boulton explains how she navigates the environment using her white cane and tactile ground markers.

 

Age Friendly Communities Handbook

Front cover of the Age Friendly Communities Handbook.From Norway comes an Age Friendly Communities Handbook that presents information in easy to consume formats. Norway has been driving a universal design agenda through national and local government since 1999. Norway’s key document for this is Norway Universally Designed 2025. This Handbook fits nicely within that framework but with an emphasis on an ageing population.

The WHO Age-Friendly Cities guide is useful and detailed, but it’s showing its age. So this handbook comes at a good time.

Infographic from the handbook showing the essential element of age friendly.The Handbook for Age-Friendly Communities is 70 pages with many photos and graphics. It covers the key steps in the planning cycle, aspects to consider in built design, transport, housing and social participation. Pre-requisites for age-friendly development are co-creation and communication.

Elements not considered in the WHO guide are plain language, internet use and how to co-create and gather information from older people.  Checklists and examples are included. Fortunately the Handbook is in English so many more people can benefit from Norway’s 20 year’s experience. A great resource, particularly for local government.

Norway has reviewed its policies over time and began to include more than the built environment. They also developed a method for mapping their level of accessibility in 2017.

Alternative Age-Friendly Handbook

Front cover of the age friendly handbook. Simple layout white with black text
Front cover of Alternative Age Friendly Handbook

Alternative to what? you might ask. An Alternative Age-Friendly Handbook, with acknowledgement to the WHO’s work on age-friendly cities, takes a different approach to creating age-friendly urban places and spaces.

Focusing on small scale age-friendly urban actions the handbook takes the reader through some useful thinking processes. First, it avoids the language of “apocalyptic demography” where an ageing population is described in terms of disaster and catastrophe. Then it moves on to the participatory approaches that have evolved over the last ten years.

A refreshing presentation of a handbook – not the classic “how to” format. Rather a creative “think about…”  While this is from the perspective of older people, much of the thinking and many of the processes apply to all age groups. It looks like a long document, but that is because it is in large print. An easy and engaging read.  Published by the University of Manchester Library. 

Disasters and emergencies: Leave no-one behind

Road Closed signs and a barrier of a road that reaches down to swollen river.‘Leave no-one behind’ is the tag line for the Sustainable Development Goals. In disaster management this idea takes on a very practical meaning. People with disability are two to four times more likely to die or be injured in a disaster than the general population. So why is our disaster planning and risk reduction failing people with disability? Being able to attend community meetings to find out what to do in an emergency is one factor. Having more than one person in the household with disability is another. Community education and plans assume everyone can get out of the house with a few belongings, get in the car and drive to safety. But some of the problem is that people with disability don’t make a plan or don’t tell anyone their plan.  There is no nationally consistent standard for including people with disability in disaster risk reduction. An article in The Conversation explains some of the research into this. It includes the comments made by people with disability when asked about disaster planning. One such comment is very telling,

“But I spoke to three different people who had three different disabilities, and you realise that the communication has to be targeted. Because those three people required completely different things. And the information they got was not in a mode which they could use.”

Four men with orange lifejackets are standing in a yellow State Emergency Service boat on a swollen river.The title of the article in The Conversation is, ‘Nobody checked on us’: what people with disability told us about their experiences of disasters and emergencies.  The academic version was published in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. The title of the paper is, Applying a person-centred capability framework to inform targeted action on Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction, and is available from ScienceDirect.  

Key points from the study are:

    1. Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction requires collaboration with people with disability to remove barriers that increase risk in emergencies.
2. The Person-Centred Emergency Preparedness framework directs attention to the choices that people with disability have in emergency situations and factors that enable or limit them. 3. Findings can be used to support implementation of Australia’s National Strategy for Disaster Resilience by defining person-centred responsibilities of people with disability and service providers in emergencies. Findings gave deep insight into the diversity and interrelatedness of factors that increase the vulnerability of people with disability. The report offers new perspectives on why Australian’s with disability are disproportionately affected by disaster. 

Universally designed emergency management

With the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, the need to have inclusive emergency systems is paramount. Although there is some awareness of people with disability within emergency management, there are few tools that embrace universal design principles. Research has focused on the general public, but not on stakeholders such as first responders, control room personnel and decision makers. Many of us turn to our mobile phones and downloaded apps to keep us up to date. But how inclusive are they? A research paper from Norway takes the topic of emergency management beyond the physical environment, such as escape routes, to communications technology. Appropriate technology can improve disaster management for everyone. The paper is a literature review of universal design methods in emergency management. Among the findings was awareness of people with disability was increasing and systems were being adapted accordingly. However, gaps remain.

Some of these are:

    • Most of the work on ICT tools and platforms for Emergency Management does not take into account Universal Design nor accessibility.
    • There is a lack of communication support between emergency medical responders and people that are deaf.
    • In use of social networks in emergency situations, the age gap was identified as significantly more severe than the disability gap.
    • Accessible tools and platforms exist, but most of them are on the conceptual or at best on the prototype level.
    • Research on the use of assistive technology by older adults during disasters is a neglected issue.
    • Accessibility is often limited to access to Internet, rather than the diversity of stakeholders and their access to digital solutions.
They also found that participatory design methods gave best results but were rarely used. Maps for visualising disasters were unlikely to be accessible, but had high value for users. The article is comprehensive and covers every aspect of emergency and disaster management, particularly from the perspective of emergency personnel.  The title of the article is, Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management from Stakeholders’ Perspective. It is open source.  

Universal Design Policy: Where to start?

Front cover of the Norwegian Action Plan
Front cover of the Norwegian action plan

The real value of taking a universal design approach is the way it draws everything together. But usually different parts of an organisation have different inclusion policies. These are often treated as an add-on for a special “inclusion department”. But inclusion is everyone’s business. That means one policy across the board. So, where to start when trying to bring a cohesive approach? What about a universal design policy that overarches other policies?

Norway was the first to devise such a policy more than twenty years ago. It has evolved to include all aspects of life. It drives all other policies. Here are three documents to help you get going.

Norway Universally Designed 2025is an action plan for implementing universal design throughout the built environment as a start. The document is evolving and now includes just about everything including communications technology. They key was to look at policies first and make everyone responsible. This one is good for planners. 

Hobson’s Bay City Council has a short policy statement which is a great model for local government. 

The European Union devised a document that has as a useful framework with action points for 15 domains. It was devised some years ago, but the concept of universal design hasn’t changed much since then. A page from an earlier European Union document encapsulates the key points in one page. 

For a more comprehensive approach, the Sustainable Development Goals are also useful. This is because they include social sustainability and the need to be inclusive.