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Make it easy to read - Leeds Older People’s Forum
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June 18, 2020

Make it easy to read

Bee Together is a Time to Shine funded project, managed by Health For All, aimed at combating social isolation and loneliness in older people with learning disabilities.

The aim of Bee Together has always been to include people within their communities. Many older people who are isolated have milder learning disabilities and do not fit into learning disability services, but they are also aware that society is not yet equipped to meet their needs.

To help the Neighbourhood Networks and other organisations around Leeds, Bee Together have created the booklet:

Ideas on how to include accessible information

Not having clear understandable information about what is going on in your area has been shown to be one of the biggest barriers to inclusion.

Learning disability services use Easy Read information – clear and concise wording and symbols or photos – to illustrate the meaning further.

The booklet explains why this information is needed, how to use it and help with how to create it.

Easy Read is useful for people with cognitive difficulties such as dementia, people who have sight and hearing impairments, those for whom English is a second language and those with learning disabilities.

We are very lucky in Leeds to have organisations who produce easy read documents to a high standard and free access to symbols, so there is lots of advice available.

All the information is in the booklet including where to look for further information about the different learning disabilities and where to go for advice.

If you would like to read further on the findings of the project so far please look out for the Bee Together interim report on the Time to Shine website.

People with learning disabilities are living longer and we need to adjust our thinking about services. How do we make services accessible to all? Easy Read is one way of doing that.

Anna-Marie Garbutt
Project Coordinator
anna-marie.garbutt@healthforall.org.uk

See also Age Proud Leeds’ own Easy Read resources