Easy Information about research: getting the message out to people with learning disabilities

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.