Client: icare
Activity: content design, content writing
Project: developing plain language guides
By identifying content patterns and writing in plain language, Weave’s content designers developed guides so people injured in car accidents could understand and access all their entitlements.
Background
icare is the New South Wales government insurer. Their remit includes providing treatment, rehabilitation and care for people who have been severely injured in a motor vehicle accident under the Lifetime Care scheme.
The problem
People seriously injured on roads in New South Wales are automatically covered by icare’s Lifetime Care Scheme. icare was concerned that, due to the complexity of the legal guidelines, people could be missing out on some of their entitlements – misunderstanding who and what is covered by the scheme. icare asked Weave to develop ‘companions’ for each legislated guideline to make the information more accessible.
What we did
Our content designers first identified content patterns that could be used to build the companions, using consistent structures, headings, introductions and phrasing for similar content.
While each companion was a stand alone document, we knew that people would often have to read more than one. Content patterns would help them scan for information relevant to them across multiple guides.
Our content design approach ensured each page was structured clearly and consistently, while allowing.enough flexibility to incorporate non-standard content.
Another important step in making the information accessible to injured people and their carers was translating complex medical, technical and legal language into plain English. We gave clear definitions for unfamiliar terms that couldn’t be avoided, and made sure most content was written using high-frequency words, those common words most people can quickly recognise without having to put in too much mental effort.
The results
We used content patterns and plain language content to increase users’ understanding of:
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the terms used by the organisation
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what icare will and won’t fund
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how they can make a claim.
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