EasyRead Standards

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Our directors have long supported the idea of having EasyRead standards.

 

Richard West is credited with having been a part of the inspiration for EasyRead, pioneering the use of ‘easy words and pictures’, whilst Eve Rank hosted meetings when she was a DRC commissioner to try to get things going.

 

Yet, despite our best intentions, nothing much happened.

 

Meanwhile the Department of Health and the Office for Disability Issues were equally keen to get a standard out there, not least to enable other government bodies and departments to know what they are commissioning and what is good enough.

 

So we have been working with them on their own standard and who can blame them?

 

Yet we can’t help feeling, and indeed hear people with learning disabilities saying, that a standard should be driven and monitored by the people who use it.

 

So we are supporting the quest for such a standard, that would incorporate not only good practice in production and presentation but also have a complaints procedure and a recognisable ‘kite’ mark to say a piece of work meets the standards.

 

There will be more about this on the LDforum and various learning disability journals soon.