We were contacted by James Rodger, a clinical psychologist working for South Devon Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), who asked if we would create a leaflet with information for recently diagnosed autistic adults and parents of recently diagnosed autistic children.
After the main focuses were decided upon, accompanying text was worked on between Dr Ginny Russell, Dr Steven Kapp and James Rodger. The art work for the leaflet was commissioned from the Art of Autism.
10,000 copies of the leaflet were printed and posted to 95 diagnostic centres around the UK in January 2018, with the PDF version also being available on our Exploring Diagnosis website. An additional print run was requested by a service in Bristol due to popular demand.
We ran an online survey to gather feedback on the leaflet and one comment received from a Learning Difficulties health team in Somerset suggested that an alternative version would be beneficial to make the information on the leaflet more accessible. Our Impact and Partnership Development Officer, Clare Pybus, helped to create this modified version drawing on her previous experience of working in secondary and further education with autistic students. An online readability checker was used to scan the text and identify terms or sections that are of high/difficult reading ability and suggests changes to reduce the overall reading level of the text. The layout of the leaflet was also modified in accordance with ‘How to Make Information Accessible’ resource from the Change People charity website.
This new version was reviewed by Autism Spectrum Co-ordinator at Bury College, Manchester, who is very experienced in creating resources for people with autism and learning difficulties. Bury College thought it was excellent and we are hoping to post a PDF version of our adapted, more accessible version very soon.