New European standards on accessible information!

According to Article 9 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Persons with disabilities have the right to receive accessible information. 

A European project called Pathways focused on making information easy-to-read and understandable for people with disabilities. The main aim of Pathways was to make lifelong learning programmes more accessible for adults with intellectual disabilities. 

It is generally viewed that lifelong learning programmes are not accessible to people with intellectual disabilities. Pathways started in October 2007 and finished in September 2009.It was funded by the DG Education of the European Commission.

10 partners from 8 countries, speaking 6 different languages took part in the project.  Two staff from Inclusion Ireland participated The project produced new European standards on how to make information easy-to-read.

The project has developed instruments and materials that can be easily used by staff and trainers working in the field of lifelong learning in order to guarantee that their programmes are accessible.   

All materials are available on the project website www.life-long-learning.eu. When you clink on the results section tool bar you will find 4 guides to tools used to make information accessible.  These guides are explained below. Click on the image on the guide to download it.  

	This guide outlines the new European Standards for making information accessible.  The standards are a list of things to think about when making information accessible for people with intellectual disabilities
	This guide gives information train teachers on how to write documents which are  easy to read and understand.
	This guide can be easily used by staff and trainers working in the area of Lifelong learning programmes to assist in making their programmes more accessible.
	This guide provides information on how to involve people with disabilities in the process of producing easy-to-read information.  People who have disabilities are the experts and this guide outlines the role they have in the writing of an easy-to-read document.

Check-list

The aim of this check-list is to allow people to check how easy to read a text is. You can download it here

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