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Easy Information about Research: Getting the Message out to People with Learning Disabilities

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Title: Easy Information about Research: Getting the Message out to People with Learning Disabilities
Language: English
Authors: Goodwin, Julian, Mason, Victoria, Williams, Val, Townsley, Ruth
Source: British Journal of Learning Disabilities. Jun 2015 43(2):93-99.
Availability: Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 7
Publication Date: 2015
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Descriptive
Descriptors: Mental Retardation, Information Dissemination, Access to Information, Foreign Countries, Video Technology, Technology Uses in Education, Research, Readability
Geographic Terms: United Kingdom
DOI: 10.1111/bld.12128
ISSN: 1354-4187
Abstract: This paper discusses the provision of easy information about research to people with learning disabilities, their families and supporters. We explore some different ways we have used over the past 25 years, to make sure that research has the greatest impact both in the UK and abroad. We discuss first the process of providing easy-read versions of research at the Norah Fry Research Centre, where two of us, Goodwin and Townsley, worked on a series called Plain Facts funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We have always used different media such as audio, but more recently, have started to use video as a way of getting information out to people with learning disabilities. We aim to present the "easy information" work done at Norah Fry, to reflect on its impact, and set it within the context of the move towards accessible information more generally, questioning some of the premises about "impact" on which accessible information is based.
Abstractor: As Provided
Entry Date: 2015
Accession Number: EJ1061774
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0103386237;f0401jun.15;2018Jul09.15:06;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0103386237-1">Easy Information about research: getting the message out to people with learning disabilities. </title> <p>Accessible Summary: People with learning disabilities have a right to be given easy information about research which is about their lives. At the Norah Fry Research Centre, we have tried to do that.We have employed a person with learning disabilities Julian Goodwin. In this paper, he looks back at the importance of the work he has done.We think about the questions and difficulties in making information about research ‘easy’. For instance different people with learning disabilities need different types of information.Easy information is changing, and we need to look forward to better ways of getting research messages out to people with learning disabilities. Summary: This paper discusses the provision of easy information about research to people with learning disabilities, their families and supporters. We explore some different ways we have used over the past 25 years, to make sure that research has the greatest impact both in the UK and abroad. We discuss first the process of providing easy‐read versions of research at the Norah Fry Research Centre, where two of us, Goodwin and Townsley, worked on a series called Plain Facts funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We have always used different media such as audio, but more recently, have started to use video as a way of getting information out to people with learning disabilities. We aim to present the ‘easy information’ work done at Norah Fry, to reflect on its impact, and set it within the context of the move towards accessible information more generally, questioning some of the premises about ‘impact’ on which accessible information is based.</p> <p>dissemination; easy‐read; empowerment issues; intellectual disability; learning (intellectual) disabilities; research; Communication</p> <p>At the Norah Fry Research Centre, a commitment to the inclusion of adults with learning disabilities in society at large is matched by a commitment to include them in the process of research (Ward & Simons [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref1">28</reflink>] ; Rodgers, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref2">19</reflink>] ; Williams, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref3">32</reflink>] ; [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref4">34</reflink>] ). As emphasised in the 2012 special edition of this journal (Blunt et al.,[<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref5">5</reflink>] ), research about people with learning disabilities should spring directly from their own concerns, should be as far as possible controlled by disabled people and should certainly include their perspectives (Barnes [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref6">3</reflink>] ; Oliver [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref7">16</reflink>] ). There have been many debates about including people with learning disabilities in research, often centring on the role of nondisabled people who work with them (Chappell [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref8">7</reflink>] ; Walmsley [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref9">27</reflink>] ). For instance, White & Morgan ([<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref10">31</reflink>] ) tell the story of a research study which originated as a PhD project, but is told from the point of view of the person with learning disabilities who became involved as a researcher. However, in order to start taking up these important roles in knowledge production, people with learning disabilities first need to have access to information about research, and even amongst those writing on ‘inclusive research’, that access cannot be guaranteed (Blunt et al.,[<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref11">5</reflink>] ; Michell, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref12">13</reflink>] ). In addition to striving to include the voices of disabled people in research, the Norah Fry Research Centre is dedicated to making sure their research has the greatest impact on the end users of research, people with learning disabilities themselves, using accessible dissemination methods. Here again, the ideas embedded in inclusive research come into play, as the production of easy information also needs to include the perspective of people with learning disabilities themselves (Rodgers et al. [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref13">21</reflink>] ; Ward & Townsley [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref14">29</reflink>] ).</p> <p>Julian Goodwin has worked at the Norah Fry Research Centre for the past 17 years as an information officer, a post for which one of the qualifications was having an identity as a person with learning disabilities. His role in the Centre has been varied during this time, and he was originally employed to work on Plain Facts a publication produced by Norah Fry for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Since 2005, Goodwin has begun writing ‘easy‐read’ reports for research carried out at the Centre, advising researchers on participant recruitment and creating both recruitment and dissemination films. Goodwin has had a number of people supporting him in his work throughout his career at the Centre. One of us, Mason has been his supporter since July 2011, working with Goodwin during a period of great change in his role, with a shift towards using technology to reach people with learning disabilities rather than predominantly easy‐read documents. This article is written in dialogue, with Goodwin′s opinions and account alternated with some reflections. Although the paper is focused on the history of one organisation, the topic of accessible information is still very much a ‘live’ one in 2014, with many current debates about the feasibility of easy‐read texts and other media. We aim to reflect on the impact of the ‘easy information’ work done at Norah Fry, to set it within the context of the move towards accessible information more generally, and also to question some of the premises about ‘impact’ on which accessible information is based.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-2">Starting points (Goodwin)</hd> <p>I was at my day centre and my Pathway officer came to see me and he knew of a job and asked me ‘did I want it?’ [Pathway is a MENCAP‐supported employment scheme]. I came to the Norah Fry Research Centre in 1997 and had an interview with Ruth Townsley. It went well and I got the job. I hadn't done any work like the work they wanted me to do before, but I got training on the job. The first job I did was working on Plain Facts. I really enjoyed working on Plain Facts. I loved talking on the tapes and the CDs that we sent to people.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-3">Origins and development of Plain Facts (Mason, Townsley and Williams)</hd> <p>Plain Facts was a project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and was in circulation for over ten years, between 1995 and 2007, with a total readership of over 40 000 individuals from self‐advocacy organisations, day centres and individual families. Before Plain Facts the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) already produced ‘Findings’ summaries for all their studies, but they were aware that these did not meet the needs of people with learning disabilities. Therefore, ideas were developed with the Norah Fry Research Centre about how to adapt and summarise research in a way that would be meaningful to people with learning disabilities. Eight editions were produced during the trial period of Plain Facts in 1995–1996, on topics ranging from housing and support, and making complaints (Simons [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref15">23</reflink>] ,[<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref16">24</reflink>] ), the closure of long stay institutions (Collins [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref17">8</reflink>] ), and supported employment (Bass & Drewett [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref18">4</reflink>] ). Already, the impact of Plain Facts can be seen to be related to the choice of topics, which were those that might interest people with learning disabilities, offering them information on how to change their lives – for instance, by making complaints about existing services (Simons [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref19">24</reflink>] ), or by asking for support to get a job (Bass & Drewett [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref20">4</reflink>] ).</p> <p>In a report for JRF at that time, Townsley & Gyde ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref21">26</reflink>] ) based the rationale for Plain Facts on the human rights of people with learning ‘difficulties’ (sic) to have access to information, stating that:</p> <p>For the majority of people with learning difficulties…a society that relies on printed information is a society that excludes them. (p. 5)</p> <p>They went on to point out the awareness about easy information that was already current in Canada at the Roeher Institute (Roeher Institute [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref22">22</reflink>] ) and indeed in the then developing movement of self‐advocacy and People First organisations:</p> <p>Inaccessible information… big words keep us out. (People First [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref23">17</reflink>] , p.6)</p> <p>Although this notion of providing access was thus gaining currency at the time, supported by the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995, there had been little if any attempt to provide information to people with learning disabilities about the research carried out about them.</p> <p>In the subsequent years, there were 54 editions of Plain Facts covering topics like daily activities for people with learning disabilities, relationships and sex, employment, issues for people with learning disabilities from black and minority ethnic groups and direct payments. During the period of JRF funding, until 2005, all the projects summarised in Plain Facts were those funded by the Foundation, so most of them originated from universities or other UK researchers, but not necessarily based at the Norah Fry Research Centre. It has to be said, therefore, that the engagement of a major funder like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was absolutely key to the impact that this project enjoyed, enlarging its scope, and the possibilities for representing research across a wide range of institutions and projects.</p> <p>The notion of employing a person with learning disabilities to work on the project thus emerged in the context of a publication that was already underway and becoming recognised as a pioneer in its field. In 1998, the team were awarded a Plain English award, and so Goodwin joined the team at an exciting moment in its history. In the following section, Goodwin discusses his memories of working on Plain Facts over the years, and what the job actually entailed.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-4">My memories of Plain Facts (Goodwin)</hd> <p>I have worked on a number of easy‐read reports over the years. I have worked with the researchers to write these reports. The researcher first wrote a short summary of their work. I worked with Ruth Townsley at first, but then with lots of other people at Norah Fry, who helped me to make the words easier to understand for people with learning disabilities. The first step was that the researcher [often someone at a distance to Norah Fry] sent us a summary, and then Ruth or one of my other supporters worked on the summary to make it easier. When I looked at it, I could decide on some of the difficult words, and suggest other ones, or think of different ways of putting things. We then sent this back to the researcher to make sure they were happy with the words. If they wanted us to change anything, then we would meet and talk about it and change them together.</p> <p>When we had added all the pictures to the words, we used to send it to the researchers again to make sure they liked the pictures. If they wanted me to change any of the pictures, then we would send the pictures back to the artist, who made the changes we asked for.</p> <p>At the same time, we thought about what pictures we would need for each bit. We used to have an artist, Vali Herzer, who drew the pictures for us. So we had to describe what the pictures should look like and check them when she sent them back. I enjoyed doing this, because it was interesting to see whether the pictures really meant anything to me.</p> <p>In some of the work I've done since Plain Facts finished, I have used Photo Symbols ([<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref24">18</reflink>] ). [This is a commercially available package of photographs]. I think photographs are better than line drawings as they are in colour and they show people more about the words. I think they are easier to link to the words than line drawings, but sometimes finding the right picture is hard. I think that taking our own pictures of the things we want to show might be better. I have done this for some of the things around the University and they look good.</p> <p>Sometimes since Plain Facts finished, I now write easy‐read reports with the researchers themselves. I did this for the Confidential Inquiry into the Premature Deaths of People with Learning Disabilities (Heslop et al. [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref25">10</reflink>] ). I worked with Anna Marriot on this report. We met a few times to write the words and add the pictures. So even though I hadn't been involved in the research, I got involved later on and learnt a lot about what the messages of the research were.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-5">Reflections on the process: the spread of ‘easy information’ (Mason and ...</hd> <p>The central point made in Goodwin′s summary above is not articulated by him, but is nevertheless the main reason for him being involved in Plain Facts, namely his identity and what is now called ‘lived experience’ as a person with learning disabilities (Ward & Townsley [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref26">29</reflink>] ). Because of this experience, he has been able to ground our work on accessible information. Choosing a new word to represent the ‘jargon’ of research has always been done with Goodwin checking out with him whether it is comprehensible.</p> <p>The term ‘learning disability’, however, covers a very broad range of individuals (Williams, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref27">33</reflink>] ), and it has long been recognised that one's person ‘accessible information’ will be incomprehensible to another. Oldreive and Waight ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref28">15</reflink>] ) have recently argued from a practitioner perspective that accessible information should be seen as a personalised process, which is related to the outcomes or targets each person has attempts to produce easy information have thus always been subject to critique from those who feel it is an impossible task to simply ‘translate’ information into easy‐read formats and expect it to be understood by all (see for instance Hurtado et al. [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref29">11</reflink>] for a recent account). There is also criticism that easy‐read information has a bias towards more able self‐advocates. In order to actually have a positive impact on the lives of people with more profound learning disabilities, information needs to be available to the family and close supporters, who are the people most likely to understand the individual communication needs and preferences of the disabled person.</p> <p>Over the years, we have wrestled with these issues at the Norah Fry Research Centre and discussed them with Goodwin himself. We have seen how his experience with Plain Facts has enabled him to grow into the role of representative of a wider range of people, becoming a far more skilled wordsmith, exercising judgement both over the pictures to use and in fact the format of the information, as he describes above. Nevertheless, we are aware of the many tensions in the process of producing easy information in practice; in the production of any information, choices have to be made about what gets included, and in Plain Facts these choices were generally the province of the nondisabled people in our team and of course the original author. That inevitably gave us much power in making decisions about what mattered to people with learning disabilities, and in general, we were guided by the title Plain Facts which implied that there were factual, concrete details in the research which could be useful to people with learning disabilities. This reduction to the ‘concrete’ has typified our thinking, and often cuts through what could be blurred or ambiguous ideas. Naturally, not all research lends itself to this approach, and doubtless some of the subtleties in the findings were lost in the process of translation. Although Goodwin now feels those decisions are fine, and he trusts those with whom he had worked to guide that process, this problem still underpins every attempt to produce an easy‐read summary.</p> <p>During the fifteen years that Goodwin has been employed, there have been huge changes towards providing easy information, not only by self‐advocacy groups but also by governmental organisations. Since 2001, for instance, the Department of Health has provided all its major policy documents in an easy‐read format, and this practice is now considered to be quite ‘standard’ in the UK, although Buell et al. ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref30">6</reflink>] ) in their recent analysis of DH ‘easy‐read’ documents have found paradoxically that the ‘easy’ summaries contained a higher level of ambiguities than the mainstream reports. This surge of interest in easy information cannot of course be entirely attributed to the work at Norah Fry. However, as long ago as 1996, we had information about how Plain Facts was starting to influence the local practices of others engaged in similar tasks. For instance, Plain Facts leaflets themselves were being reprinted in newsletters in Lancashire, and an anonymous researcher in Sheffield reported in Townsley & Gyde ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref31">26</reflink>] ) that he had found Plain Facts 1 invaluable as a means of discussing housing with a self‐advocacy group he supported and had then produced an accessible summary of his PhD thesis on self‐advocacy.</p> <p>The big question of course is whether all this work on providing information about research projects has actually had an impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities. We put this question to Goodwin.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-6">How Plain Facts has influenced the lives of people with learning disabilities (Goodwin)</hd> <p>One decision I made was to live on my own. It was influenced by all the work I've done on Plain Facts. At the moment, I'm changing my support. I know that I can change it – I've got confidence that I can change things. I think other people use the information from Plain Facts in the same way.</p> <p>Plain Facts used to be delivered to my day centre. We had a library, and they used to get put in the library or the office. We had a student council at that time, and they used to get one of the magazines, and it was taped then. And we used to listen to it. We could also just read the Plain Facts and go and get them when we wanted them. I think though that people did not read it on their own, they had a member of staff read it for them. Then they would talk about it together. But they could listen to the tape on their own. When people talk together, they can connect the information with their own lives.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-7">The nature of decision‐making (Mason & Williams)</hd> <p>The assumption behind Plain Facts was that there is information in research which could help people with learning disabilities to make choices in their lives. These notions of rational, autonomous choice‐making have been even further in the spotlight since the 2005 Mental Capacity Act. The Code of Practice sets out the way decision‐making must be supported for those who may have capacity to make a decision, and also how people lacking capacity should be included as far as possible in best interest decisions. Thus, ‘easy‐read’ information is positioned in this process as part of a model of decision‐making which incorporates human relationships and interdependency (Jenkinson, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref32">12</reflink>] ; Bandura, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref33">2</reflink>] ; Wehmeyer and Bolding, 2009), and it is interesting that Goodwin himself notes how Plain Facts was generally used in conversation between people with disabilities and nondisabled supporters. The enduring tension here, however, relates to the way in which verbal communication might be used, either to empower, persuade or ultimately overrule the choices of people with learning disabilities (Antaki et al., [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref34">1</reflink>] ). We still need further research about how easy‐read texts are actually used in everyday interactions.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-8">The wider impact of Plain Facts (Williams & Townsley)</hd> <p>A review of the production of accessible information (Rodgers & Namaganda [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref35">20</reflink>] ; Rodgers et al. [<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref36">21</reflink>] ) produced a series of guideline booklets about easy information, and these were incorporated into a newly designed Plain Facts in 2005. At the same time, we were aware of the growing international interest in easy information, when Townsley and Williams were invited by the University of Meija Gakuin, in Tokyo to deliver a conference about inclusive methods. Plain Facts editions were translated into Japanese, and the principles explained to an intrigued audience, which included people with learning disabilities in an academic conference – a novelty at that time in Japan.</p> <p>When Plain Facts stopped being funded by JRF in 2005, we carried on producing editions in a similar, updated format about research studies at Norah Fry, until 2007–2008. That was the end of an era at Norah Fry. Regular readers missed the arrival of their Plain Facts envelope, and Goodwin has had phone calls from individuals who used to receive them, as recently as 2013, asking why they have not had an issue for a while.</p> <p>In 2012, twelve orders for different copies of Plain Facts were ordered from around the world, including the UK, the USA and Japan. The following year, in 2013, another of our major pieces of research was seized on by an Austrian organisation, ‘Ibunta’ who immediately took the easy‐read version and translated it into German. A scan of their work (which was admirable) revealed the influence that ‘easy‐read’ was having on the structure of the German language itself. However, the format of easy information has now moved on, and Goodwin himself moves with the times, as his account below illustrates.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-9">After Plain Facts (Goodwin)</hd> <p>Plain Facts was good, but the pictures are out of date now. They did a good job at the time and people seemed to understand them, but photographs are better. You have to move with technology. I have started to work a lot more with video as a way of getting information out to people with learning disabilities. I like doing this. I think that film is a good way of getting information to lots of people.</p> <p>I started making films for pieces of research that had been finished at Norah Fry. I did this with Mason and Nick Tarleton. We chose the research projects to be have films made of them, and we talked to each of the researchers about their work. I then worked with Mason to write a short film script. I did one of the films myself and then worked behind the camera with Nick, while some other people with learning disabilities were in front of the camera. These films have been on the Norah Fry website, and I am looking forward to making more. But I have worked on research that is being done at the Centre now recently. I worked with Mason and Paul Swift and a professional film maker from RedWeather Productions on a project called ‘What happens when people with learning disabilities need advice about the law?’ (Swift et al. [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref37">25</reflink>] ) to make informed consent easier. We used film in this research to get people to take part and at the end of the research, to tell people about it.</p> <p>Working on this research was good. Lots of people wanted to take part in the research because of the films I helped make. Seeing words, moving pictures and having someone talking about it to you is really good. Making sure that people understand why they are taking part in research is important. Sometimes the pictures on research information sheets and consent forms are hard to understand. Using film is better because people like to watch films, and they do have computers and laptops at home or at their day centres. They use them too.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-10">Discussion: what is the legacy of Plain Facts? (Williams)</hd> <p>‘The point of Plain Facts was not just to tell people about the findings of research projects, but also to make a link between these findings and people's lives’. Those words were not written in 2014, but in 1996 by Townsley (Townsley & Gyde [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref38">26</reflink>] ). At that time, she pointed out that some projects lend themselves to that type of link better than others; there will always still be a place for research that is perhaps abstract, theoretical or policy oriented and will not be totally comprehensible or relevant for people with learning disabilities.</p> <p>Since Plain Facts stopped being published, Goodwin has continued to work at Norah Fry as an information officer. He often works with other people with learning disabilities who have roles as co‐tutors and are experienced in inclusive research, and so their roles intertwine, with ideas often springing from the group interaction. During 2013, he was a researcher in a small pilot project called ‘Easy Talk’ with Williams ([<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref39">33</reflink>] ). He visited self‐advocacy groups to record how supporters talk with self‐advocates about easy information. Easy‐read texts are necessary, but not sufficient to ensure comprehension; we are aware of, for sure, the urgent need to find out more about how to communicate verbally with people with learning disabilities, so that they can understand the messages that they are given, for instance in medical encounters and in support planning (Williams, [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref40">33</reflink>] ).</p> <p>In 2014, Goodwin and Williams were funded by the publisher of the international Disability Studies journal Disability & Society, to select one paper from that journal from 2013, and attempt to make it more accessible to potential readers with learning disabilities. In order to do that work, Goodwin and one of his colleagues read through all the ‘key points’ from articles published that year in the journal, realising that many of them were quite abstract, seemingly meaningless, and irrelevant to the concerns of people with learning disabilities. Several, however, were not. In the end, they selected a paper by Näslund & Gardelli ([<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref41">14</reflink>] ) about the use of technology in Sweden, and they have produced a video by talking directly with the author on Skype. Thus, the legacy of Plain Facts lives on; where people with learning disabilities were not previously engaged, we hope that in the future the debates in Disability Studies can be more accessible to those with learning disabilities, and indeed that they can start to contribute to those debates. We will leave the last words to Goodwin.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-11">The Future (Goodwin)</hd> <p>I think that using film is something that we will keep doing in getting information to people with learning disabilities. I think that the films need to be on YouTube so people with learning disabilities can find them easily. People do have computers but they only use the websites they know, to find things. If they are using the computer with someone else, then they might find the Norah Fry website but they need training to do this on their own. I don't think people with learning disabilities are confident with computers.</p> <p>Some people with learning disabilities do have Smart Phones, but I don't think that many people are on the Internet. I think this will change, but at the moment people with learning disabilities need training about social media. I do think that using Twitter and Facebook is important. People with learning disabilities use them as do lots of learning disability organisations like Mencap, who could help us reach more people as they have lots of followers.</p> <p>I would also like to look at making audio recordings about the research that people could download and listen to at home. This is like the tapes and the CDs we used for Plain Facts and people really like using them. If research is going to have an impact with people with learning disabilities, then it is no good just producing information. We have got to find out and use the best ways to get the information out, and the future is exciting.</p> <hd id="AN0103386237-12">Acknowledgements</hd> <p>The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for all their support in developing Plain Facts over the years.</p> <ref id="AN0103386237-13"> <title>References</title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref34" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext>Antaki C., Walton C. & Finlay W. ( 2007 ) How proposing an activity to a person with an intellectual disability can imply a limited identity. Discourse and Society, 18 : 393 – 410. </bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref33" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext>Bandura A. ( 2000 ) Exercise of human agency through collective efficacy. 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  Data: Easy Information about Research: Getting the Message out to People with Learning Disabilities
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Goodwin%2C+Julian%22">Goodwin, Julian</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Mason%2C+Victoria%22">Mason, Victoria</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Williams%2C+Val%22">Williams, Val</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Townsley%2C+Ruth%22">Townsley, Ruth</searchLink>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22British+Journal+of+Learning+Disabilities%22"><i>British Journal of Learning Disabilities</i></searchLink>. Jun 2015 43(2):93-99.
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  Data: Wiley-Blackwell. 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148. Tel: 800-835-6770; Tel: 781-388-8598; Fax: 781-388-8232; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA
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  Data: 10.1111/bld.12128
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  Data: This paper discusses the provision of easy information about research to people with learning disabilities, their families and supporters. We explore some different ways we have used over the past 25 years, to make sure that research has the greatest impact both in the UK and abroad. We discuss first the process of providing easy-read versions of research at the Norah Fry Research Centre, where two of us, Goodwin and Townsley, worked on a series called Plain Facts funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We have always used different media such as audio, but more recently, have started to use video as a way of getting information out to people with learning disabilities. We aim to present the "easy information" work done at Norah Fry, to reflect on its impact, and set it within the context of the move towards accessible information more generally, questioning some of the premises about "impact" on which accessible information is based.
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