Access to information allows us to learn new things, participate in society, make choices, and defend our human rights. But most information is not accessible for people with intellectual disabilities. People with intellectual disabilities deserve information, too. Article 9 in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) states that information needs to be accessible for people with disabilities.
Information needs to be written in the right way so that people with intellectual disabilities can understand it. The right kind of images can help people understand new ideas.
People with intellectual disabilities should help write easy to understand content. They know best what kind of content is easy to understand and what helps them understand information.
The organization Inclusion Europe has created a new guide, European standards for making information easy to read and understand. This guide is available in 15 European languages, including English and Spanish. This guide can help you learn how to create information that is easy to understand.
A few examples of the advice you can learn from this guide include:
- Do not use metaphors.
- Use the same word to describe the same thing throughout your document.
- Percentages and big numbers are hard to understand. Instead, you can use words like “few” or “many” to say what you mean.
- Keep your document short. People may not be able to read a 100-page book. Instead, you can write three smaller booklets.
The guide has many more ideas for writing information that is easy to understand.
