Everything that makes a document Easy Read, in one place
Easy Read is more than short sentences. A document only works for readers with a learning disability when the words, the pictures, the design and the way it was made all come together. It is easy to get one right and quietly fail the others, a perfectly worded page in a tiny font, or a beautiful layout no reader ever checked. This free interactive checklist covers all four areas so nothing slips through, and it saves your progress in your browser as you tick items off.
The four areas
- Words: one idea per sentence, everyday language, a reading age around 7 to 9.
- Pictures: a meaningful image next to every point, in one consistent style.
- Design: a large clear font, left-aligned text, strong colour contrast, WCAG 2.2 AA.
- People: the document is made and checked with people who have a learning disability.
Know which checks matter most
Not every item carries the same weight. The checklist marks the essentials, the ones an accessibility review is most likely to fail you on: a low reading age, an image beside every paragraph, body text of at least 16pt, left-aligned text, colour contrast of at least 4.5 to 1, meeting WCAG 2.2 Level AA, and above all involving people with a learning disability. Getting these right is the difference between a document that looks accessible and one that genuinely is.
Made with, not just for
The single most important item on the list is the one people skip when they are busy: checking the information with the people it is meant for. Readability formulas and design rules get you a long way, but only a real reader can tell you whether the meaning came through. Build that step into how you work, with templates, an image library and a group of readers you can go back to, and Easy Read stops being a last-minute scramble and becomes something your organisation does well by default.
Print it, share it, keep it
When you are done you can print a clean report showing exactly what is complete and what is left, useful for sign-off, for an accessibility file, or for handing to a colleague. Your ticks stay in this browser and are never uploaded. Pair this checklist with our Easy Read Checker, which tests the actual wording of your text and can rewrite it into Easy Read, so you have both the whole-document view and the sentence-by-sentence detail. Both tools are free and private.