Enhancing Communication for Individuals with Unique Learning Requirements
As a paraplanner, I frequently encounter requests to incorporate specific editing preferences into documents, such as corporate color schemes, fonts, text justification, spacing, and headings. While these preferences may align with the specific requirements of advisors or businesses, it is essential to consider the impact they have on individuals with unique learning paths.
Various disorders can significantly affect an individual’s ability to comprehend and engage with the information presented to them. Learning disabilities can impair learning in specific academic areas such as reading, writing, or mathematics. Common examples of learning disabilities include dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and dysphasia.
According to estimates by the Australian Dyslexia Association, approximately 10% of Australians are affected by dyslexia. However, studies conducted in English-speaking countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States suggest that the actual figure may be closer to 20%.
This implies that potentially one out of every five clients you interact with may have dyslexia.
Dyslexia specifically affects an individual’s ability to read and write. Dyslexia can hinder word recognition, accurate spelling, and comprehension of written or spoken content.
“There are a number of simple and easily actionable edits outlined above that you can change in your client communication -to help potentially 20% of your clients understand and take in the information you are providing to them.”
So, what implications does this hold for effective communication with your clients? To assist individuals with learning disabilities, the British Dyslexia Association has developed a style guide. Let’s explore some of the common challenges we encounter when crafting advice documents and the recommended solutions.
Readable Fonts
- Opt for sans serif fonts, such as Arial and Comic Sans, which provide more legibility with less crowding.
- Maintain a font size of 12-14 points.
- Some individuals with dyslexia find that increased line spacing enhances readability, so it is preferable to use an inter-word spacing of 1.5.
- Avoid underlining and italics, as they can cause text to appear jumbled or crowded.
- Utilise bold formatting for emphasis.
- Refrain from excessive use of capital or uppercase letters in continuous text, as lower case letters are easier to read (although financial planning does tend to favor name abbreviations).
Headings and Structure
- Employ headings and styles to establish a consistent structure that aids navigation through the content.
- For headings, use a font size that is at least 20% larger than the normal text. For additional emphasis, consider using bold formatting.
- In Word, you can find these formatting tools in the Home and Layout tabs.
Colour
- Opt for single-color backgrounds and avoid distracting background patterns or images.
- Use dark-colored text on a light (not white) background.
- Refrain from using green, red, or pink, as these colors can pose difficulties for individuals with color vision deficiencies (color blindness).
Layout
- Left align the text without justification. This facilitates easier identification of the start and end of each line and ensures consistent spacing between words.
- Craft concise sentences with simplicity in mind. Optimal sentence length ranges between 60 and 70 characters.
Obviously concise writing, clear language and avoiding jargon and abbreviations isn’t something we do well in financial planning. However, perhaps the above recommendations will help to simplify some of the writing we put into advice documents.
There are a number of simple and easily actionable edits outlined above that you can change in your client communication -to help potentially 20% of your clients understand and take in the information you are providing to them.
Simplifying your communication to clients can only help with engagement and understanding, all to further clients in their financial planning journey.
For reference we have provided links for further reading:
