Off the beaten tracks of technically focused accessibility and usability regulations lies a field of research - almost undiscovered by mainstream accessibility and usability discussions that has the potential to serve people with learning disabilities as well as other possible target groups best: How to provide information that is readable, understandable and usable.

There is a vast variety of regulations e.g. for software and the web to guarantee that the provided tools may be used with different kinds of assistive technology and follow basic rules of interactive and usable design.

Nevertheless research shows, that big parts of the target group don´t benefit to the full, planned extent because the structure and/or wording doesn´t fit to the users´ needs. UNESCO showed up that linguistic skills are deteriorating and even in highly industrialised western countries the illiterate population is rising and already between 3-7%.

In this STS, we want to focus on the comprehensive aspects of "Easy to Read" and comprehension in means of reading, understanding and using (written) information as complementary to "only" technical accessibility.

On one hand, we will highlight the potential and chances of "Easy to Read" from:

• linguistic,
• socio-political,
• technical
• practical
• ...

point of view and elaborate possible ways to implement rules, standards and workflows in existing initiatives to open up the so called information society to the biggest possible number of users by opening up information to potentially "new" target groups:

• People with learning difficulties / learning disability
• People with cognitive disability
• People with SPLD
• (Deaf and) Hard of hearing persons,
• Older adults
• People with a foreign mother tongue
• People with a weak social and/or educational background
• People that need quick and reliable information
• ...

On the other hand we will discuss limits and barriers and what "counter strategies" exist.