TopEasy — Austria's Daily News Service Co-Tested by People With Intellectual Disabilities

APA (Austria Presse Agentur), partnering with the capito accessibility network and funded via Austria's Ministry of Social Affairs, launched TopEasy in spring 2017: a compact digest of the day's four to six main stories — politics, economy, culture, sport — rewritten at CEFR level B1, later extended to the simpler A2 level (with lines capped at 42 characters for readability), plus an audio version, published five days a week.

capito's production process has staff first translate stories into easy language, then people with intellectual disabilities test each text daily before it is published; readers can toggle between A2, B1 and the original APA wire text with a single click — an ongoing accessibility quality-assurance loop rather than a one-off translation exercise.

TopEasy is distributed via APA's website, an email newsletter, ORF Teletext and homepage, and the capito app, and won Austria's 'Innovative Practice 2018' award and the TUN Fonds 2018 award. The EU-facing AccessibleEU centre notes that roughly 40% of adults struggle with complex text — the broad population such services target — but no public subscriber counts or reading-comprehension outcome data were found; evidence of impact rests mainly on nine years of continuous operation, external awards and the disability-led testing process itself, rather than measured readership or comprehension gains.

Read the full analysis: https://apa.at/produkt/topeasy/