For the third year in a row our website has been approved by the Plain English Campaign. We are extremely proud to be able to display the Internet Crystal Mark logo for 2009-2010.
Plain language principles are built into our web writing guidelines for our web authors and are part of the training they receive. The continued approval of the Plain English Campaign is a sign of our commitment to providing information for you in easily understandable language.
If you notice anything on the website that you do not consider to be written in plain language or to the appropriate level please let us know using the feedback form and we will do our best to change it.
Recommendations of the latest Plain English Campaign review
In order to approve our site the Plain English Campaign has to carry out a review and assess whether or not it meets the required standard. The latest review (October 2009) found that our site was "well-designed and well-maintained" and "generally the language used ... is very good". As ever, improvements can always be made and this year they made the following recommendations:
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Their review found that ... |
Our response |
| Our disclaimer had long sentences and contained jargon. |
We have rewritten our disclaimer to make it easier to understand. |
| Icons were used to show the format of a downloadable document. We should use text as well to help users with visual disabilities who do not have images switched on. |
The links they identified have been altered. We will remind our authors of the need to state the format of a downloadable document. |
| The opening hours of council offices were not shown. |
We now show the opening hours on our Council Offices page. |
| There was inconsistency in how we refer to ourselves. We use 'Eden District Council', 'the Council', 'we' and 'our'. It would be better if we used more personal language such as 'we, 'us' and 'our'. |
This is something that we recognise as a problem across the site. Although we have guidelines for our authors there are still those who prefer a more formal approach to language. We feel that we are gradually reducing the formality of our language but this is an ongoing process and not something that will happen overnight. |
