Is your Easy Read up to standard? Find out in a minute
Is your Easy Read up to standard? Find out in a minute
If you make Easy Read, there is now a free way to check your own work against the UK Easy Read Standards. Upload a PDF. About a minute later you have a grade, a certificate, and every problem marked on your own pages.
It is live now at easyreadstandard.org. Here is how to use it.
How to check your document
Go to easyreadstandard.org - click Check a document and drop your PDF in the box. The checker asks you two questions no software can tell from a file - do you have permission to use all the pictures, and did people with a learning disability help write or check the document. Answer them, click Check my document, and go and make a cup of tea.
We have made a short Easy Read guide to the whole thing, one step a page. Swipe or scroll through it here, or download it as a PDF.
Page 1 of 9. Swipe or scroll sideways to turn the pages.
What the report tells you
You get a grade from A to D. Under it, every rule in the standards gets a tick, a warning or a cross - with a note that says why. Then the part we think you will like most: a page-by-page view of your own document, with every problem marked where it sits. Click a marker and it tells you which rule it is, how far short the page fell, and what to do about it. "One of 22 pictures is at least 5cm wide. The narrowest measures 2.6cm." That is something you can fix in ten minutes and check again.
When you are happy with the result, there is a certificate you can keep with the document or send to whoever commissioned it.
One check, three reports
UK Easy Read Standards. This is the grade. Every numbered rule, part by part, with a link to the standards document on each one. Where a rule needs a human judgement, the report says so rather than guessing.
Accessibility. Many people who use Easy Read listen to it rather than read it, so the same check runs PDF/UA and WCAG 2.2 tests on your file. If a screen reader will stumble on your document, you find out here - without running a second tool somewhere else.
Newton. Since 2024 we have sat down with 36 self-advocacy groups across the UK, more than 150 people with learning disabilities - to ask what makes Easy Read work for them. The Newton tab checks the things people told us matter that the standards do not cover yet - whether people with a learning disability helped make the document, whether there is a clear front cover with a picture, whether there is too much on a page, whether it says when it will be reviewed. It has its own grade and never changes your UK grade.
One of the groups put the case for all of this in eleven words. "I can't even understand my letters the council sent. I can't stand that."
Your pictures, checked too
This is the bit for Photosymbols customers. The free check reads the words and measures the layout. If you subscribe to the Photo Library, EasyMaker, or both with the Easy Read bundle - sign in first and an Advanced Level check looks at the pictures as well - whether each one shows what its words are about, whether the same picture is used for the same thing every time, whether they are all in one style, and how colour is used. Nothing else does this.
Check as many documents as you like - but fair use applies, which at the moment means up to 10 documents a day - or 3 a month for registered users without a paid subscription.
What a checker cannot do
Software can measure sentence length, picture size, text size and page count. It cannot tell you whether a document makes sense to the person it is for. A person with a learning disability should still read your Easy Read before it goes out. The checker is there so that when they do, they are not the first to notice the pictures are too small.
The checker is independent. It is not produced or endorsed by the UK Easy Read Standards Working Group, whose standards it uses with credit.
Try it on your Easy Read
Try it on the last document you finished. Or your best one. A minute, and you'll know.
The checker will keep improving over the coming weeks. If a rule is reported in a way that does not match your reading of the standards - please tell us.
Email ask@photosymbols.com or call 0117 457 8888.