Solution

APA launched the easy German language news service Top Easy within the framework of a pilot project, which started in March 2017. Five times a week Top Easy is presented as a compact news overview, including four to six of the most important news stories of the day in the fields of politics, economics, history, culture, and sports. The service targets persons with intellectual disabilities and is available through a variety of sources and formats, including television teletext, a daily newsletter, a partnering online newspaper, or APA online services.

Initially, the APA’s partner Capito translated the news content into easy language and tested it with persons with intellectual disabilities on a daily basis. Since then, Capito has trained APA staff in translating the content in-house, and it is currently providing its expertise soley for checking the quality of the APA translations and providing feedback.

Impact

• Around 40,000 persons use the service per month
• A compact news overview of around four to six short articles are produced each day
• Daily newsletter provided to around 100 key users in non-profit organizations

Goals

Since July 2017 the Austrian public broadcasting company’s teletext service has been providing a new feature – Nachrichten leicht verständlich (“News easy to understand”) – based on the APA-TopEasy news service.

The model can be replicated in other German-speaking countries by establishing a network of news and translation agencies for easy language. There have been deliberations to simplify the language of the TopEasy news feed even more in order to reach people with other types of disabilities, such as cognitive disabilities.