22
Make sure Easy Read has the same information
As mentioned earlier, if both a technical/complex version of your
document and an Easy Read version will be available to the public, they
must have the same information in them. We try to release all versions
of a document publicly at the same time to make sure they are uniform.
You may have to compare a few drafts of the Easy Read and non-Easy
Read texts to make sure the Easy Read version has all the information
it needs. If you have already released a document publicly and want
to create an Easy Read version, do not remove any content that was in
the original document. It is okay to add in content in order to explain
concepts that were left out of the original, but removing content is not
giving Easy Read readers equal access.
If you are translating a document that you haven’t released yet, and you
feel like you need to take out content in order to make it accessible,
that is okay, as long as you remove the content from both versions of
the document. Remember, both versions have to include the same
information. But think very carefully about what content to keep
in, and what to take out. Asking your reader to learn too much new
information all at once can be inaccessible. But you should keep in the
important points that your reader needs to know to understand the
topic. For example, let’s say you are translating a resource about how
dogs evolved, which you haven’t published yet. If there is a long section
comparing dogs to cats, you might decide that people don’t need that
information to understand dog evolution, and cut it from both versions
of the resource. But you should leave in the section about how dogs
developed from wolves by living with people for thousands of years.
People need to know about that to understand dog evolution.