A middle-aged woman with curly ginger hair, thick glasses and a colourful blue jumper points to a wall-mounted screen showing SurveyMaker, with example Easy Read survey questions about favourite flavours, yes or no answers and smiley face ratings.

Say hello to SurveyMaker

Martin Wood

Say hello to SurveyMaker

Every organisation we work with says the same thing: we want to hear from the people we support. Then the survey arrives. A long page of small text, a row of tick boxes, a word like "satisfaction", and a login before you can start. The people whose views matter most are the ones it leaves out.

So we built a survey tool the other way round. SurveyMaker starts with the person answering. One question on each page. Big, clear words. A Photosymbols picture beside the question, and you can put pictures on the answers too. A button to hear it read out. It comes with the Easy Read Bundle.

A survey question, Question 3 of 5: What did you enjoy? It has a picture of two people thinking and a Listen button. Below are answer cards with pictures: The people, The food, The activities and The venue. The people and The food are ticked.

What people see when they answer

We followed the Easy Read Standard for everything a person answering reads and presses: the text size, the size of the pictures, the space around them and the size of the buttons.

  • One question at a time. A bar at the top shows how far through you are, and Back always takes you to the question before.
  • Pictures that carry the meaning. Smiley faces for how you felt. Pictures on the answers too, so "The food" can look like food.
  • Listen. Press the speaker and the question is read out. On yes-or-no, choice and agree-or-disagree questions, each answer has its own Listen button too.
  • Bigger text in one press. The text size button makes everything bigger, and the survey remembers it.
  • A check before sending. At the end, every answer is on one page with a Change button beside it. Nothing is sent until the person says so.
  • No login, nothing to download. Open the link or scan the QR code and start. Stop part way, and you can carry on later on the same phone or computer.

A survey on a phone. Question 1 of 5: How did you feel at the event? A picture shows a group of people playing music. Below are three big buttons with faces: Unhappy, OK and Happy, then Continue.

Making one takes minutes

You make surveys in the Photosymbols Library, next to the pictures you already use. There are four ways to start:

  • A ready-made Easy Read survey – Service Feedback, Event Feedback, Health Appointment Feedback or Accessibility Check, with their pictures already chosen.
  • From scratch – give it a name and add your own questions.
  • Describe it – say what you want to find out and who will answer, and AI writes the first questions in Easy Read and looks for a picture for each one.
  • Upload a document – a letter, a form or a report – and AI turns it into survey questions.

Whichever way you start, you check and change every question before anyone sees it. There are 13 kinds of question, from yes or no and smiley faces to star ratings, agree-or-disagree scales, written answers and dates.

The Make a new survey screen, asking How do you want to start? Four cards with pictures: Start from a template, Start from scratch, Describe your survey, and Upload a document.

Online, on a poster, or on paper

When it is ready, copy the link, or download the QR code and put it on a poster in reception. Not everyone wants to answer on a screen, so every survey also prints as a paper form. Fill it in together at a group or a meeting, then type the answers back in: they go into the same results as the online ones, marked as paper.

Reading the results

Results show the totals at the top, then a chart or summary for every question and the written answers in full. You can look at each response on its own, filter by date, and download a CSV for a spreadsheet or a PDF of the charts to share with your team or your board. If you like, you get an email for every response, or one a day.

The results of a survey called Our summer garden party: 18 responses, all sent. A bar chart shows most people chose the happy face, and a star chart shows an average of 4.2 stars.

Looking after people's answers

Asking people what they think means looking after what they tell you. Every survey comes with an Easy Read privacy notice, written from the survey's own settings: who is asking, why, what you keep, for how long, and what people's rights are. You choose whether to ask for a name and whether people must agree before they start. You choose how long answers are kept – 6, 12 or 24 months, or until you delete them – and older answers are deleted for you.

Good to know

  • SurveyMaker comes with the Easy Read Bundle. It isn't part of the Photo Library or EasyMaker on their own.
  • Questions come in order. A survey can't yet skip questions because of an earlier answer.
  • Once people have answered, you can still change the words and pictures. To add, remove or reorder questions, make a copy.

There is more on the SurveyMaker page, including how it compares with a general survey tool. If you already have the Photo Library and want to move up to the Bundle, email ask@photosymbols.com and we'll sort it out. And when you have run your first survey, tell us how it went. We'd love to hear what the people you support made of it.

Martin Wood