Important Information Should Be Understood by Everyone. Now It Can Be.
Think about the last time you received a letter from a hospital, a local council, a housing association or a benefits office. Dense paragraphs. Technical language. Legal phrasing. References to policies and clauses most people would need a professional to interpret.
Now imagine trying to make sense of that letter if you have a learning disability. Or if English is not your first language. Or if you are living with dementia and your reading comprehension is not what it was. Or if you are a carer, exhausted and under pressure, trying to understand a decision that directly affects someone you love.
This is not an edge case. This is the daily reality for millions of people across the UK and beyond. And in many of those cases, the consequences of not understanding are significant: missed deadlines, unchallenged decisions, entitlements not claimed, rights not exercised.
Important information should not be difficult to understand just because it has been written in a formal or technical way.
What Easy Read actually is
Easy Read is an established format for making written information more accessible. It uses plain English, shorter sentences, clearer structure and supporting images to help people understand what a document is saying and what, if anything, they need to do next.
It is widely used in health, social care, education and public services, and it is recognised as a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2010. But creating Easy Read documents properly has always been time-consuming, inconsistent and resource-intensive. Most organisations that should be producing them either do not, or do so only for a narrow set of documents.
The result is a significant and largely invisible gap in how public and professional communication reaches the people who need it most.
AI doing something that genuinely matters
There is a lot of conversation right now about what AI can do and most of it centres on productivity, automation and efficiency. These are real and important benefits, we know first hand. But some of the most meaningful applications of AI are not about saving time or cutting costs. They are about reaching people who have historically been left out.
askVERA is askelie® “s Easy Read tool, and it’s an application we are extremely proud of. It converts complex documents, web pages, text or a chatgpt/google type search into accessible formats using plain English, clearer structure and images where helpful. It does not oversimplify. The goal is not to strip out meaning but to make sure the meaning actually gets through.
It was designed with a clear understanding of what makes this hard to do at scale: inconsistency, time pressure and the sheer volume of documents that need converting. askVERA addresses all of that while keeping human review as part of the process, because professional judgement still matters.
Who it is for
This is where the story has just changed significantly.
askVERA has always been available to organisations, and the sectors where it makes most sense are easy to identify: local authorities, health and social care providers, housing associations, education providers, legal and advice services, charities and advocacy organisations and government bodies. Anywhere that produces written communication for people who may struggle to understand it in its original form.
But askelie has now launched askVERA as a direct-to-consumer product, which means anyone can use it.
A parent trying to understand an EHCP for their child. A carer navigating a care plan for a family member with dementia. A support worker helping someone with a learning disability understand a tenancy agreement. Someone whose first language is not English trying to make sense of a benefits letter. A volunteer at a community organisation who needs to communicate clearly with people from a wide range of backgrounds.
You do not need to be part of a large organisation to use it. You just need a document that someone important to you needs to understand.
Why this matters beyond accessibility
There is a broader point here worth making.
When people cannot understand the information in front of them, they cannot fully participate in decisions that affect their lives. They become dependent on others to interpret for them, which creates its own vulnerabilities. They miss things. They accept outcomes they could have challenged. They disengage from services and systems that are supposed to support them.
Accessible communication is not just a nice thing to offer. It is a condition for genuine inclusion. And for the organisations that produce these documents, the cost of inaccessibility is not invisible either: more follow-up calls, repeated explanations, complaints, and pressure on frontline teams who end up compensating for communication that should have been clearer in the first place.
Getting this right benefits everyone.
Try it
askVERA is available now, and a free trial is available for anyone who wants to see how it works in practice.
If you work in health, social care, education, housing, legal services or the public sector and you are producing written communication for people who may struggle with complex language, it is worth ten minutes of your time.
And if you are an individual who simply needs a document made clearer for someone who matters to you, you can use it too. That is exactly what it is there for.