Books Beyond Words
Project description
The project supports people with a learning disability or communication difficulty, the resources empower people through pictures.
What was your response to Covid-19?
From the start of the pandemic we acted quickly, by creating stories that helped to explain Coronavirus and helped people understand how to stay safe.
It is absolutely critical that people with learning disabilities, and those who support them, have the information that they need to stay safe and well in a format that they can understand.
What was different about this approach?
We set out to provide free downloadable resources that could reach the widest possible audience – information provided by public bodies can be too complicated or simply unintelligible for people who find written words difficult, whereas everyone can understand pictures.
Our coronavirus resources are digital only and available as free downloads from our website:
- Beating the Virus
- Good Days and Bad Days in Lockdown
- Jack plans ahead for Coronavirus
- When someone dies from Coronavirus
- Let’s talk about when someone is ill or dies from Coronavirus
- When it’s not safe to stay at home (during the Coronavirus)
- Understanding Covid-19 in Secure Settings
What is the impact and benefit for people?
To date these resources have been downloaded over 15,000 times, and may have reached 40-50,000 people with learning disabilities. We know that the resources have been shared on the websites of other advocacy organisations or simply forwarded through families and friends.
In addition, ‘Beating the Virus’ has been developed for North America and Continental Europe, with locally appropriate emergency numbers included. A number of the resources have been translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian and Polish.
Is the solution sustainable post Covid-19?
These resources will remain on our website and will continue to be part of our catalogue.