LRDG seminar: Simplification
Date: 22 January 2008 Time: 1.00 pm-2.00pm
Bridging the complexity gap from the other side: the challenge of simplification Rob Waller, University of Reading Many, perhaps most, people have problems in using documents about financial services, tax, benefits, and the like. There's a complexity gap between this complex information and users' skills, motivation, experience, schemata and other things that we wrap up in the word 'literacy'. While the government puts a lot of money into developing basic skills, little effort is made to bridge the gap from the other end by simplifying information. Numerous recent reports have called for greater effort, from bodies such as the Better Regulation Executive, the National Consumer Council, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, the Financial Services Authority and others. But their specific recommendations, and the responses of government departments and regulators,are often amateurish, under-funded and ill-informed. We will discuss these recent reports and look for common ground between literacy research and document design.Everyone WelcomeVenue: Meeting Room 2, Institute for Advanced Studies
Event website: http://literacy.lancs.ac.uk
Contact:
Who can attend: Anyone
Further information
Organising departments and research centres: Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster Literacy Research Centre, Linguistics and English Language
Keywords: Literacies, Literacy