Accessible communication resources for health professionals

We all have a role to play when it comes to making sure health information is accessible to everyone, and this can be done in different ways.

This resource library is for health professionals and includes practical and easy-to-use tools and resources to help achieve best practice when developing accessible health information.

- Accessible documents
  The NSW Public Service Commission has put together information for creating accessible word documents, PDFs, presentations, and emails.
- Accessibility and Inclusivity Toolkit
  Digital NSW provides the building blocks for creating user-centred digital services, as well as policy, tools, and guidance to enhance accessibility.
- All of Us: A guide to engaging consumers, carers and communities across NSW Health
  All of Us is a guide to respectful, consumer, carer, and community engagement across NSW Health. The website provides users with information about the six ways of working and tools for facilitators, helpers and hosts.
- Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care: Health literacy
  Australian Government publications addressing health literacy and effective communication.
- Australian Government Style Manual
  Sets the standard for Australian Government writing and editing. It includes an entire section on producing accessible and inclusive content. Other useful topics relating to accessible communications, including Easy Read and plain language, are covered throughout the manual.
- Better Health: Suggestions for communicating with a person with dementia
  A Victorian Government resource on ways of effectively communicating with a person with dementia.
- Dementia Support Australia
  Resources including fact sheets, brochures, best practice guides for health professionals and carers of dementia patients.
- Digital Service Standard
  The Australian Government’s best-practice principles for designing and delivering government services. Accessibility requirements are specifically addressed in Criterion 9: Make it Accessible. Criterion 6 and Criterion 7 also cross with accessibility in requiring responsive and consistent interfaces and common platforms.
- Plain English principles
  Tips on how to use plain English when developing communications materials.
- National Health Survey: Health literacy
  Data on health literacy by population characteristics including age and sex, by geography, health risk factors and status based on results from the 2018 Australian Bureau of Statistics’ national health survey on health literacy.
- Ungeneva: Disability Inclusive Language Guidelines
  A language guideline developed by the United Nations Office aimed at removing barriers and promoting respectful communication with and for people with disability.
- Aboriginal Cultural Activities Policy
  Protocols for recognising the history, culture, and experience of Aboriginal peoples at NSW Health events and events hosted or sponsored by NSW Health.
- Co-design toolkit: Working together with Aboriginal communities
  Use the 8 Ways Aboriginal pedagogy to apply Aboriginal perspectives.
- Communicating effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
  Queensland Health developed this general guide for communicating effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
- Communicating Positively: A Guide to Appropriate Aboriginal Terminology
  This guide provides NSW Health staff, and other stakeholders, with information and guidance on appropriate word usage when working with Aboriginal peoples and communities, and when developing policy and programs.
- Effective and safe communication with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consumers
  The National Safety and Quality Health Service (NSQHS) with the support of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Standing Committee (NATSIHSC) developed this guide to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander consumers can be fully informed about their health.
- CALD Assist - Overcoming language barriers in healthcare
  CALD Assist is a free app downloadable from Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which can assist clinicians to communicate with people who are not fluent in English. CALD Assist does not replace professional interpreters, but can assist with overcoming basic language barriers when interpreters are not available. To contact an interpreter, please use the NSW Health Care Interpreting Services.
- Developing health resources for people from refugee backgrounds
  This resource guides NSW Health services and programs in the planning, development, production, post-production, and distribution phases of multilingual health information for refugee, refugee-like and asylum seeker communities.
- Multicultural Communications Playbook
  This playbook is for communications professionals and covers key aspects of multicultural marketing communications campaigns.
- NSW Government Language Services Guidelines
  Produced by Multicultural NSW, these guidelines intend to provide NSW government organisations with guidance on how and when language services should be used in the provision of services.
- Position Statement: Use of machine translation to communicate with culturally and linguistically diverse communities
  The NSW Health Multicultural Health Communication Service strives to ensure the most accurate and reliable translations are available for consumers, and strongly recommends only accredited translators are used when delivering information for culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
- Easy Read
  Easy Read is a way of presenting written text in an accessible, easy-to-understand format. For resources developed in Easy Read by NSW Health, refer to Easy Read resources for health consumers.
- Communication Access and Inclusion Terminology Report
  Speech Pathology Australia released a report aimed at facilitating a shared understanding in the preferred term/s used to refer to people with communication disability.
- Communication Hub: Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
  An online fact sheet about understanding communication using something other than speech.
- Communication tips for people spending time with people with intellectual disability
  A brochure providing tips on how to communicate with people who have an intellectual disability, including accessible written communications.
- Dementia Support Australia
  Resources including fact sheets, brochures, best practice guides for health professionals and carers of dementia patients.
- Intellectual disability: Information for health professionals
  A fact sheet by the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation to help health professionals understand intellectual disability and how it affects a person's health.
- Intellectual Disability Actions for Clinicians Fact Sheet
  Make reasonable adjustments for a person's intellectual disability to create an inclusive environment and facilitate meeting the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards.
- Our words matter: Glossary of terms
  The glossary improves the understanding of difficult mental health language. It offers clear definitions for words that are used regularly. It also has new words that have become popular. The glossary is updated as language continues to change.
  This page includes content about suicide. Support services are available.
- Overcoming communication barriers: Working with patients with intellectual disabilities
  A fact sheet written by the Royal Australian College of General Practice on communicating with patients who have an intellectual disability.
- Patient information Portal Resources - Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health District (ISLHD)
  Resources about the ISLHD's Patient information Portal (PiP) and PiP process, which are used to improve the quality of written consumer health information.
- Say less show more
  Designed by the NSW Agency for Clinical Innovation Intellectual Disability Network, this website provides a series of simple visuals, e-learning packages and support materials that show children and adults what happens during a physical examination or blood test.
- Communication accessibility checklist
  Use this checklist to rate the accessibility of the communications you create and to learn ways to improve your written, visual, and digital communications.
- Event accessibility checklist
  When it comes to organising an event, there are a few aspects to consider to ensure the event can be enjoyed by everybody. This checklist will provide you with considerations to help accommodate people with disability.
- Hemingway App
  An app that helps make your writing bold and clear by highlighting lengthy, complex sentences and common errors.
- Microsoft Accessibility Checker
  Run the Accessibility Checker built into Microsoft office applications to make your content easier for people with disabilities to read and edit.
- The Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Test
  When Microsoft Word finishes checking spelling and grammar and corrects errors, you can choose to display information about the reading level of the document.
- The Patient Education Materials Assessment Tool (PEMAT) and User’s Guide
  A seven-step guide to using the PEMAT to assess printed patient education material.
- The Sydney Health Literacy Lab (SHeLL) Editor tool
  The SheLL Editor helps make health information easy to understand and follows the health literacy guidance checklist.
- WebAIM
  A free tool which checks the contrast accessibility of your foreground text and background colour.
- Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
  WCAG is a site that focuses on standards, developments, and issues in web page development as they relate to accessibility for people with a disability.
- Accessible communication formats
  A UK Government site on how to develop and provide accessible communications.
- Accessibility NSW learning modules – Digital NSW
  A range of free and paid courses and learning modules on digital accessibility.
- Council for Intellectual Disability
  Online Easy Read training courses facilitated by the Council for Intellectual Disability. These courses will help health professionals develop health communication materials in Easy Read to enable consumers to make informed decisions about their health.
- Digital Accessibility for the Modern Workplace
  A 50-minute course on LinkedIn Learning by Hector Minto, an accessibility evangelist at Microsoft, who shares how to use accessibility solutions, outlines technology solutions for each type of disability and provides best practices for developing more inclusive experiences in meetings, emails, presentations, and social media posts.
- Digital Accessibility Foundations
  The Introduction to Web Accessibility is a free online course that provides the foundation you need to make your websites and apps work well for people with disability, meet international standards and provide a better user experience for everyone.
- Intellectual disability training videos
  This video series can help you understand the care needs of a person with intellectual disability.
- My Health Learning (for NSW Health staff)
- National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS): Supporting effective communication
  This e-learning module demonstrates – from the perspective of NDIS participants – what effective communication looks like and how it supports choice and control.
- National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS): Worker Orientation Module ‘Quality, Safety and You’
  An interactive online course that explains the obligations of workers under the NDIS Code of Conduct – from the perspective of NDIS participants. It was developed in consultation with the sector, including NDIS providers and people with a disability.
- Teach back
  An online learning module developed to provide healthcare workers with the information and skills to use the teach-back method.