We acknowledge that Australia is a very diverse and multicultural country. We work in the south east of Victoria, which is one of the most multicultural areas of the world. For this reason, we recommend co-designing and testing plain language documents with different cultural groups. You may opt for a service that just includes our plain language review and document creation.  We do however recommend working with multicultural communities to improve your information and make it accessible to all.

We offer different levels of service that may meet your needs but please contact us to discuss if you have any questions - healthliteracy@enliven.org.au

The ISO Plain Language Standard

For a document to align to the 4 principles of the ISO Plain Language Standard it must be relevant, findable, understandable and useable. We recommend using our full suite of services to achieve the best outcomes.

Codesign services

Our network of multicultural community engagement champions will run focus groups with their communities to inform your document design and content. This process helps you to research your audience and contributes to the relevance of the document, by understanding the needs and challenges of these communities.

Focus groups include 6 – 10 participants (led by champions with some in-language interpreting and supported by enliven). Participants and champions are paid for their time. Focus groups generally run from 1 – 2 hours and we produce a final report. Focus group questions are designed with you, enliven and champions to promote cultural respect and understanding.

Plain language review of content.

Our plain language team will review the codesign material (if input from community was sought prior to developing your draft document). While it is best practice to include co-design early in the process, we know that this may not be possible in all cases. It is also possible to seek multicultural input later in the process through our multicultural lens testing.

We will create a draft document that ensures your information is findable and understandable. We will send you the draft and allow for 2 rounds of edits as needed.

Multicultural lens testing.

This service is also available through our multicultural network. Members of our network individually review the draft plain language document for the following:

• Is it culturally respectful, sensitive and inclusive?

• Is it culturally relevant?

• Would it translate well or are there terms or concepts that are not known to some committees?

• Is it relatable?

• Is it easy to understand for people from their culture? 

This service also focuses on whether your document is relevant and culturally inclusive. It also tests some elements of understandability but noting that understandability can only effectively be measured by testing the document with laypeople from multicultural communities (see below).

Multicultural layperson testing.

This service is facilitated by our network members with laypeople from their communities. It tests whether laypeople from multicultural communities who are not familiar with your service or topic  can find the information they need, understand the information and use it to take whatever action is needed.

This service is not available as a standalone service. We use this process and the multicultural review process to test our own plain language documents at enliven. 

Please note:

• Multicultural codesign, multicultural lens testing and plain language review services are available as standalone services.

• Multicultural layperson testing (consumer plain language testing) is only available after both plain language review and multicultural testing. 

Need more information?

Individual quotes are available based on the size of the document and the services selected. If you would like to discuss this with a member of our team, please contact healthliteracy@enliven.org.au.