Legal Design and Easy Language: Creating a Set of Images to Illustrate Administrative Texts Aimed at Migrants

Abstract

Understanding legal and administrative information is difficult for lay people, especially when they face language and cultural barriers, such as migrants with limited second language skills. Explanatory texts in Easy Language can facilitate the understanding of this information, particularly if accompanied by images provided in this accessible language. However, despite existing guidelines for the use of images in Easy Language texts, there is a lack of guidance on how to design images suitable for specific audiences and contexts. This research proposes an image design method for Easy Language texts related to administrative procedures for newcomers and offers insights into effective design strategies for this context, derived from a field experiment. The image design was carried out using a participatory method according to the human-centered design principles. 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 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.