ProPublica Uses Plain Language to Make Stories More Accessible ▬ Editor & Publisher

ProPublica Uses Plain Language to Make Stories More Accessible

Plain Language

Editor & Publisher: 1.25.2021 by Rob Tornoe

It’s nice when a newsroom experiment pays off in unexpected ways.

In Arizona, ProPublica teamed up with the Arizona Daily Star to sponsor a story by Amy Silverman that looked into why the state’s Division of Developmental Disabilities turned down thousands of people who sought assistance.

The investigative piece has all the heft and rigor you’d expect from a ProPublica deep dive. But what could have simply ended as a robust and impactful piece of journalism transformed into something of an experiment in story forms (20 separate urls in total, including Spanish translations and audio versions) in an attempt to reach the very people the story was about—men and women living and coping with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Silverman said the decision to experiment with story forms started with a storytelling event that featured the actual voices of those living with disabilities, done in an attempt to bring them into her story in a meaningful way. The event, run by Rebecca Monteleone, a professor of disability studies at the University of Toledo, opened Silverman’s mind to the possibility of taking additional steps beyond her reporting to make the story itself more accessible to the group she was covering.

=That road eventually led to Silverman’s lengthy and at times complicated story being translated into plain language, the first time ProPublica (or any other news outlet, as far as I can tell) created a plain language version of a story in an attempt to increase its accessibility for disabled readers.  READ MORE ➤➤

 

Automatic Readability Checker

Based on 7 readability formulas:

Grade Level: 18

Reading Level: very difficult to read.

Reader's Age: College graduate

Arizona Promised To Help People With Developmental Disabilities.
But some had to wait a long time. Some did not get help at all.

Arizona Daily Star: 11.05.2020 by Amy Silverman with data analysis by Alex Devoid;  Kyra Wade (plain english copy)

We worked with ProPublica to write this story. The Star is part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network.

This story has been translated into different formats:

Leer en español

Listen in plain language

Read the original text

Listen to the original text

Read why we translated this story

Many people think Arizona does a good job helping people with developmental disabilities. But some people have problems getting help. It can be confusing. People wait a long time.

These are stories about people who had problems getting help in Arizona.

Developmental disabilities are sometimes called DD. There are many kinds of DD. Some of them are:

Cerebral palsy

Autism

Intellectual disability

Epilepsy

The place that helps people with DD in Arizona is called the Division of Developmental Disabilities. It is sometimes called DDD.

🔽
We made the story in plain language because we want people with DD to be able to read it.  READ MORE ➤➤

Automatic Readability Checker

Based on 7 readability formulas:

Grade Level: 8

Reading Level: fairly difficult to read.

Reader's Age: 12-14 yrs. old

(Seventh and Eighth graders)