Accessible Communication

About the Project

The Accessible Communications Pilot project is about reviewing some of the NDIA’s communications to help make them easier to understand for people with intellectual disability.  

Down Syndrome Australia will work with an Expert Review Panel made up of people with intellectual disability. The Panel will provide feedback, advice, and recommendations.  

The Expert Review Panel will run until 13 June 2025.

What does the Expert Review Panel do?

The Expert Review Panel will share their lived experiences of how they understand information from the NDIA.

The Panel will:

• take part in co-design
• provide support and leadership to other people with intellectual disability.   

Panel members go through the factsheets in structured sessions. They point out what makes sense and what is confusing. They suggest improvements like simpler language, shorter documents and adding glossaries. 

Impact so far 

The NDIA is using the feedback to improve current and future resources. This project shows how including people with lived experience makes information stronger, clearer and more useful for everyone. 

The project has also been a fantastic opportunity for people with disability to build skills, confidence and connections.  

“Working on the Expert Review Panel for the Accessible Communication Pilot Project has been interesting to learn about the NDIA documents and how we hope to improve them. Working with other team members has helped me understand that we all have different ways of learning and ideas. I hope that our lived experience helps make a difference and that NDIA take on our recommendations so Easy Read documents are actually Easy to Read and not long and complicated. I really like having a Glossary to look at to help me understand words I don’t know.” 

– Ally Gillies, Panel Member 

For more information