Designing a set of images for Easy language texts involving users and stakeholders: Methods and insights from a field experience with the migrant target group in the administrative procedures domain

Comprehending legal and administrative information is challenging for many lay people who often face expert knowledge and expert language barriers. Understanding this kind of information is even tougher for those who also encounter language and cultural barriers (Rink, 2020), such us migrants with low second language skills. In order to support comprehensibility, explicative texts in Plain Language on norms or procedures may be provided (Tiberi and Ninatti, 2017), though for the category of recent migrants, Easy Language could be more effective (Maaß and Rink, 2021). Furthermore, the use of imagery recommended in this form of accessible written communication can help to better acquire complex concepts (Mayer, 2002) such as those related to the law. Easy Language guidelines (e.g., Inclusion Europe, 2009; IFLA, 2010; Bredel and Maaß, 2016; García Muñoz, 2012; Sciumbata, 2022) provide recommendations on types, functions and semantic features of images to be used in a simplified text, while also emphasizing that they must be appropriate for the audience they are targeted to and the text domain. However, the guidelines do not address how to design images for Easy Language texts that can meet these requirements. This contribution aims to answer this question in the domain of the administrative procedures for newcomers, through the experimentation of an image design method and on the basis of the results of the experiment itself. The image design was carried out using a collaborative method according to the User-centered design (Norman, 1986; Sharp et al. 2019). Through the different design phases (from identifying key procedural elements and concepts that require visual explanation to prototyping, evaluation, and redesign of the images) stakeholders like civil servants and linguistic-cultural mediators, as well as representative groups of target users were involved. Particularly, mediators were asked to verify the intercultural comprehensibility of the images and their appropriateness for a multicultural society. The final comprehensibility testing of the 61 images created was conducted with 50 target users from 18 different countries using the “Method for testing comprehensibility” of the ISO 9186-1:2014 standard (Graphical symbols — Test methods) as a guide.