Clear and Easy – a handbook for making written information easy to read and understand for people with a learning disability

Clear and Easy handbook is now free of charge. See all downloads below.

Clear and Easy handbook is for anyone who is, or should be, producing accessible information for people with a learning disability. It will support different sized organisations in their understanding of accessible information, why it is important for people with a learning disability to have access to information they can understand, and how to produce Easy Read materials.  Clear and Easy will benefit you if you are from a local People First group, a large disabled people’s organisation, a social services department, the public sector, or a private service provider, such as a bank.

It includes:

2 Films

  • Film showing why accessible information is important and features a group of people with a learning disability explaining some of the difficulties they have with information that is too hard to understand. 4 minutes, 16 seconds long.
  • Film giving a quick overview of why its important to produce information in Easy Read and a few tips on how to actually do it. – 4 minutes, 47 seconds. 

6 Booklets

The booklets have been designed to guide you through the different stages of producing easy read information: Thinking, Planning, Doing and Checking.

A fifth booklet, Changing, gives advice on the changes you can make so accessible information becomes a priority within your organisation; whilst a sixth booklet, Find out more, provides you with an extensive reference list of organisations and information that can help you become an accessible information organisation. See booklet downloads below.

Check it tool

A tool accompanies the handbook to check the quality of the easy read information produced.  See here

Guidelines for producing easy read in Welsh

See here

Clear and Easy:

  • was produced by Learning Disability Wales, Mencap Cymru and All Wales People First in 2012. It was part of a project on promoting accessible information, funded by Welsh Government.
  • was written by Anne Collis, from Barod, an accessible information specialist with a strong background in social research and social policy.
  •  introduces ‘everyday English’ and offers simple readability tests.
  • focuses on written information in an Easy Read format, but throughout the guide references are made to how information can be made available in different formats.