Is your information actually easy to read?
Most public information is written for the people who wrote it, not the people who have to read it. For the millions of people with a learning disability, low literacy, or English as a second language, a dense letter from a council, a bank or a hospital is a wall they cannot get over. Easy Read is the answer: short sentences, everyday words and a picture beside every point. This free checker measures your text against those principles in seconds, gives it a score, and shows you exactly what to fix. It runs in your browser.
How it works
- Paste your text or upload a plain-text file.
- See your reading age and score straight away, worked out from standard readability formulas.
- Find the problems in place: long sentences and hard words are highlighted right in your text, with a plain-language list of the fixes that help most.
What it checks
The tool looks at the things that actually make text hard: sentences that are too long or carry more than one idea, long or uncommon words where a simple one would do, the passive voice that hides who does what, whole words in capital letters, and numbers, times and dates written in unfriendly ways such as "25%" or "15:00" instead of "1 in 4" and "3pm". It reports your reading age, because Easy Read aims for around 7 to 9, and the two levers that move it most: fewer words per sentence, and fewer difficult words.
A first draft, then real readers
There is also an optional AI rewrite that turns your text into short, one-idea-per-line Easy Read wording while keeping your facts, names and numbers. It is a fast way to get a first draft, but it is only that. No formula and no AI can judge whether the meaning survived, whether the tone is respectful, or whether your pictures help. The one step that cannot be skipped is checking the document with people who have a learning disability, the "nothing about us without us" principle at the heart of good Easy Read.
Words are only part of it
This checker tests the wording. A genuinely accessible Easy Read document also needs the right pictures, a clear large-font design, and to be made with its readers. Our companion Easy Read Compliance Checklist walks you through all four areas, words, pictures, design and people, and saves your progress as you go. Use the two together: the checker to get the language right, the checklist to get the whole document right. Both are free, private and run in your browser.