Some of our products are quite complex and we don’t always realise that not everybody is as passionate about mail as we are. People with learning disabilities may have enough problems with reading a web site, that any distraction can make it impossible to understand them. When different parts of the page aren’t clearly separated, that can also cause problems. If you have a learning disability and find certain pages extra hard to understand, please let us know.

Moving images on web pages can be distracting for anybody but for users with learning disabilities they can affect the ability to focus.  For that reason we only show animated images in the main content of the page. Any animation that keeps moving has to have a pause button that allows you to stop it.

Another distraction that can pose a problem for people with learning disabilities is pop-ups. They can break the train of thought and make it impossible to get back to the original task. It can also be hard to understand where a pop-up begins and the rest of the site ends. These are just some of the reasons why we restrict the use of pop-ups on our site and why we always warn before opening a new window.

For dyslexics, complicated language is hard to understand. In addition, studies show that everybody benefits from clearer, simpler language. It’s faster to read and there are fewer misunderstandings.

It is part of the Royal Mail brand guidelines to write simply and clearly. But when you write about things you have worked with for years it is easy to overestimate how much others know. We try to be vigilant but jargon and technical language has a way of creeping in.

When every sentence is an effort, it’s important that we keep our texts concise. Particularly headings and link texts should always make sense out of context. That makes royalmail.com easier to understand for everybody.