Why use Easy English?
For organisations
Do you provide services or information to your community?
Any person in your community may have low literacy.
Remember all staff and volunteers have different reading skills.
Many times, office based staff may have good reading skills.
But
- do they have the time to read and understand complex documents?
- do they have the writing skills to develop correct complex documents using complex language and complex sentence structure?
Who said complex documents are the only documents that are acceptable?
What documents do you expect staff and volunteers to be able to read, understand and use functionally?
It may be
- Instruction sheets – How to guides
- Training materials
- Safety instructions
- Policy and Procedures
- Contracts
- Annual Leave, Sick Leave and Holiday Leave Entitlements
- Salary Packaging
- Intranet and Internet
- Rights and Responsibilities
- Emails
- Daily reports
- Incident reports.
What else can you add to this list?
Audit your internal documentation. What documents available to all staff need to be in Easy English?
What information does your organisation produce for the public to read?
It may be
- Fact sheets or information sheets
- Newsletters
- Flyers & brochures
- Posters
- Website
- Annual reports.
If community members can not read your information, they will not be able to engage with your organisation. They may miss out on the vital information or support services they need.
What documents do you expect clients or members to read?
It may be
- Service agreements
- Consent forms
- Code of conduct
- Rights and responsibilities
- Cancellation policy
- Invoices
- Training materials
- Appointment letters
- Surveys & customer feedback forms
- Emails and text message reminders.
These need to be in Easy English for everyone to understand.
Our project examples
