Why Good Easy Read Content Needs Lived Experience And What The Brain Has To Say About It
If you’ve ever tried to make a piece of information truly clear for someone with cognitive or language processing challenges, you’ll know it’s not as simple as ‘making it shorter’ or ‘using plain English’.
The real work of making something genuinely accessible goes much deeper. It involves asking:
How will the other person interpret this?
Will they understand this word the way I do?
Will this image make sense to them?
Will they feel respected — or talked down to?
In other words, you're doing something psychologists and neuroscientists call ‘perspective-taking.’ It turns out, this is one of the most complex things our brains do — and science can help explain why co-production with people who have lived experience isn’t just helpful.
It’s absolutely essential.
What Happens in the Brain When We Try to Communicate Clearly?
There’s a part of your brain that gets to work when you try to imagine what someone else is thinking or feeling. It’s called the Right Temporoparietal Junction — or r-TPJ.
This area helps you:
Imagine someone else’s perspective,
Predict what they might misunderstand,
And adjust your communication to suit them.
It’s part of what scientists call the “social brain” — the network that helps us navigate other people’s thoughts, beliefs, and emotions.
What the Experts Say — and Why It Matters for Easy Read
Rebecca Saxe (Neuroscientist, MIT)
Saxe is one of the leading researchers on the r-TPJ and how the brain handles theory of mind — our ability to think about what someone else knows or believes. Her work is foundational for understanding how we model another person's point of view.
“It’s very hard to tell what someone else thinks, especially when it's different from what you know.”
– Rebecca Saxe, TED Talk on how we read each other's minds
This is the basic challenge of Easy Read: how do we explain something in a way that works for someone whose understanding of the world might be very different from ours?
Chris Frith (Cognitive Neuroscientist, University College London)
Frith is a pioneer in studying how the brain enables social interaction. His research has shown that much of what we call "understanding" involves guessing what other people intend, based on partial clues.
“Our social brain has two problems to solve. First, it must read the mental state of the person we are interacting with. Second, it must make predictions about future behaviour on the basis of that mental state.”
– Chris Frith, The social brain
In Easy Read work, we constantly have to predict what will be understood, what might be confusing, and how someone will feel reading it. That’s high-level brainwork — and also extremely easy to get wrong without help.
Jean Decety (Neuroscientist, University of Chicago)
Decety studies empathy, particularly how the brain lets us simulate other people’s emotional experiences. He draws a key distinction between empathy and projection.
“Empathy is the ability to experience and understand what others feel, without confusion between oneself and others.”
– Jean Decety
This is critical when creating content for people with cognitive challenges. It’s easy to assume we know how they’ll feel — but empathy requires careful attention, not just good intentions.
Tania Singer (Neuroscientist, Max Planck Institute)
Singer’s research focuses on compassion and social emotions. She warns that genuine care for others doesn’t mean feeling their pain — it means understanding their perspective and acting supportively.
“Compassion does not mean sharing the suffering of the other: rather, it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other.”
– Tania Singer
This is a helpful reminder that Easy Read content shouldn’t dramatise or condescend — it should support and respect the adult reader.
Peter Fonagy (Clinical Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, University College London)
Fonagy developed the concept of mentalization — the ability to reflect on our own and others' thoughts and emotions. His work has had a major influence on understanding conditions like borderline personality disorder, but its relevance is much broader.
“Mentalization is the capacity to think about thinking — both our own and that of others.”
– Peter Fonagy
Easy Read creation is all about mentalization: what will the reader think this means? What might they assume that I don’t? Where could things go wrong? And crucially, how can I adjust the content to meet their actual needs?
Co-Production: Why We Can’t Just Guess
So here’s the problem: all this mentalizing, perspective-taking, and emotional modelling is difficult, even for experts. And when we're writing for people whose minds work differently from ours — perhaps because of learning disabilities, stroke, acquired brain injury, or autism — it gets even harder.
This is where co-production comes in.
Co-production means working with people with lived experience of cognitive or language challenges to design and test Easy Read materials. Not just consulting them, but actually creating with them.
It’s not a box-ticking exercise. It’s a cognitive shortcut that bypasses the limits of our imagination.
Instead of trying to simulate the reader’s mind, we talk to the reader — and get immediate feedback.
Why It Matters More for Adults
Creating Easy Read for adults is uniquely challenging. Adults with cognitive challenges:
May have complex emotional histories with written information
Might have learned patterns of avoidance or overconfidence
Are expected to engage with complex systems (healthcare, benefits, housing, the law)
Often need to make high-stakes decisions based on what they read
So the content has to be clear, accurate, respectful, and usable — not just simplified.
Without co-production, we risk guessing wrong. And the cost of getting it wrong isn’t just confusion — it’s missed appointments, lost benefits, housing insecurity, and worse.
Conclusion: The Brain Makes the Case for Co-Production
Neuroscience, psychology, and clinical theory all point in the same direction. We are not very good at imagining how other people think — especially when they think differently from us.
And that’s okay.
Because we don’t have to do it alone.
Co-production with people with lived experience makes Easy Read stronger, safer, and more respectful — not by adding something extra, but by supplying what our brains can’t reliably simulate on their own.
If you're serious about making information accessible, co-production isn’t an optional bonus.
It’s the foundation.