Health Literacy Innovations (HLI) Launches the REDA – A New Suitability Measurement
Bethesda, Maryland (PRWEB) October 31, 2013 -- To add the final steps to the health literacy review process, Health Literacy Innovations (HLI), a company that creates tools to help eliminate confusion from low health literacy, today announces the REDA -- the ReadsEasy Document Assessment -- a new feature within its flagship product, the Health Literacy Advisor (HLA).
The REDA, which focuses on factors that affect readability and comprehension, includes a suitability checklist to assess cultural appropriateness, layout, design, organization, graphics, numeracy, use of plain language and usability testing.
Available only within the HLA, the REDA scores materials on eight elements of plain language, readability goals, and the use of long sentences and of long words. An electronic plain language checklist tallies users’ answers to produce a final REDA score. This score and accompanying traffic-light icon symbol rating lets HLA users know if their document meets plain language and suitability standards or, if not, which elements need refinement.
“Because even easy-to-read health information may still be complicated for the low literacy reader, HLI is excited to add the REDA to the HLA as another step to ensure that consumer health materials are suitable (understandable),” says Health Literacy Innovations Content Expert & Multilingual Director Aracely Rosales. “Combined with HLA’s readability assessments and search-and-replace functions, HLA users now have a one-stop health literacy tool to examine and assess the comprehension and readability of consumer health information,” Rosales says.
Health Literacy Innovations
Health Literacy Innovations (HLI) creates tools to help eliminate medical mistakes and confusion due to low health literacy. HLI's flagship product, the Health Literacy Advisor™ (in Spanish--Asesor de Comunicación en Salud™) is the nation's first, only, and most powerful health literacy software tool.
As a "health literacy checker," the HLA streamlines the review and simplification process by allowing users to assess the readability of their documents and then fix it using plain language principles. The HLA applies nine well-known readability indices in English and six indices in Spanish and an interactive search-and-replace function to eliminate hard-to-read terms and phrases and medical jargon with plain language alternatives. The combination of these two functions, a document "grade" with a readability score/grade level, and the ReadsEasy™ stamp (a reward for good work) sets the HLA software apart from programs or readability indices alone. For more information, please visit http://www.HealthLiteracyInnovations.com or call 301-230-4966.
Aileen Kantor, PRHEALTHCARE, (301) 229-6782, [email protected]
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