Audit your Easy English document

There are more documents being developed and labelled Easy English. You may think this is a great step forward. However, many of these documents do not reflect the Australian Easy English Guidelines nor the intent of the guidelines. Nor are they useful for the intended audience of Easy English.

Writing in Easy English takes a lot of practice. It is easy to forget some of the elements.  Before you start, you need to be clear about who is your audience. 

Easy English is primarily developed for people with very limited reading skills. These people do not see themselves as readers. Nor would they consider reading as a relaxing leisure activity.

 We have developed a short 5 point audit to assist you determine whether your work, or the information you are sending to consumers is fit for purpose.

1.  Space

Have you used white space? You will have 

·      double line spacing for all lines of text

·     double line spacing for all space between each paragraph of content.

2. Images

Do you have images for

·      the title?

·      all headings?

·     each key point?

There are no words in images.

3. Words

Have you 

·      used the every day words of your audience?

·      used short words only?

4. Length

Do you have

·      short sentences? Aim for 5-8 words.

·      1 idea for each sentence?

  

5. Reviewed by target audience

      Have you

    ·      checked your work with intended consumers? 

    ·      made changes after your consumer reviews?

Our team at Access Easy English can help you to improve your Easy English drafts by

·      providing editorial review with comments 

·      developing some different types of documents with you as best practice examples for your team to reference.

You can view some recent examples of best practice Easy English on our website 

Or email us for a recent handout of examples. 

We can also create your Easy English content for you. You can use these 5 audit points to check we have covered these points.

 We offer 2 day training and short seminars. These are advertised on our website and social media communications.

 Look out for our updated ‘The Australian Writing Style Guide For Easy English’ available soon. It will have lots of other points to help you develop quality Easy English for your audience. It will complement the training we offer.

Cathy and Rachel 

Cathy Basterfield

Access Easy English
Speech Pathologist
Telephone: 0466 579 855
Email: cathy@accesseasyenglish.com.au
Website: https://accesseasyenglish.com.au/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/accesseasyenglish
Twitter: @accesseasyengli
LinkedIn Cathy Basterfield