Accessible, easy to read legal templates, to help people with learning disabilities access legal services.
The templates resulted from a research project that investigated the barriers faced by people with learning disabilities seeking legal information and advice. They were co-produced by a group of legal professionals and people with learning disabilities, and are freely available for any legal services provider to download.
Legal capacity researchers from the University of Birmingham and the University of Leeds have produced templates to help legal service providers make their services more accessible to people with learning disabilities.
The templates resulted from a research project called COALITION (Co-Producing Accessible Legal Information), which investigated the barriers faced by people with learning disabilities seeking legal information and advice.
There's this massive unmet legal need in terms of translating quite complex legal ideas into accessible formats to help people with learning disabilities access legal services and find out what their rights are
The need for those services is acute. People living with learning disabilities face discrimination, harassment and hate crimes, as well as barriers to everything from employment to housing and police services. By law, their movements and decision-making are often restricted.
The COALITION project brought together a group of legal professionals and people with learning disabilities for six workshops which discussed the barriers to accessible legal information. The team then co-produced templates that legal service providers can use to make their services more accessible alongside a toolkit for researchers to support inclusive research practice. These include guidance on how to produce “easy read” information and consent forms, which use simple language and images to explain complex legal points.
The COALITION legal service templates are freely available for any legal services provider to download, adapt and use for their work if they wish. Law firms can add their own logos or brand in their house style, or use as a template to develop their own format.
Led by Professor Rosie Harding from Birmingham Law School, COALITION was a collaboration between Rosie Harding, Amanda Keeling of the University of Leeds, Sophie O’Connell of Wilsons Solicitors, Philipa Bragman and Andrew Lee from self-advocacy organisation People First, which is for and run by people with learning difficulties.
Professor Harding added: “When you provide information in an easy to read format, most people will go to it first, because it is quicker to read. This means easy read information is useful for people with low literacy, whether or not they have a learning disability, and for those for whom English is not their first language.”
For media information contact Ruth Ashton, University of Birmingham Enterprise, email: r.c.ashton@bham.ac.uk
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Professor of Law and Society
Birmingham Law School
Academic profile of Professor Rosie Harding, Chair in Law and Society at Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham, UK
