Improving Readability by Design

When developing patient education handouts, the focus is often on the writing. The challenge is to present health information—that is often complicated and unfamiliar—in a way that it is easy to understand. A number of recommendations, often referred to as “plain language" (among them using short, simple words, writing short sentences, and avoiding unnecessary words and jargon), have become proven methods for improving the readability of printed documents. A second set of recommendations, often separated from “readability” and referred to as “legibility,” can be easily overlooked.

This toolkit explores seven design elements that affect the readability of printed patient education materials and the key role they play in developing handouts that are both easy to read and easy to understand.

The toolkit is available as flash presentations with audio. Choose a topic below. Clicking on the screen starts the presentation. 

 

COMING SOON! 

This site is currently under construction. I am in the process of redoing all of my presentations and toolkits. Please check back for updates and send me an email if you have any comments or questionsdoug@healthcommunications.org

 

Tools to dowload and use

(Tip: right click on a link below and select "save target as")

Click the link below to download a copy of the design readability scorecard:  

scorecard.pdf scorecard.pdf
Size : 54 Kb
Type : pdf

 

Click the link below to download a copy of this full presentation without audio. The full presentation contains many examples that illustrate the seven design elements.   

powerpoint_slides.pdf powerpoint_slides.pdf
Size : 5354 Kb
Type : pdf

 

The following files are mentioned in the presentation and are offered here for you to download and review.

checklist.pdf checklist.pdf
Size : 510 Kb
Type : pdf
simple_experiment.pdf simple_experiment.pdf
Size : 29 Kb
Type : pdf
character characteristics.pdf character characteristics.pdf
Size : 325 Kb
Type : pdf

 

More tools to dowload

(Tip: right click on a link below and select "save target as")

Click the links below for more tools:

 

 

© 2010 Doug Seubert, Health Communications, a division of Advantage Consulting Services, LLC.