‘Easy Reading’ AI Tool Opens Up Reading to Those with Intellectual Disabilities

In a world-first, Dentsu Creative has launched the pioneering AI tool, ‘Easy Reading’, to open up the world of reading to the millions around the world with intellectual disabilities. Developed using Amazon Web Services (AWS), Easy Reading can translate any text into Easy-to-read, the internationally recognised system of making information easier to understand.

To launch the technology, Dentsu Creative has partnered with Visit Portugal, an organisation already dedicated to the power of literature having launched Read Portugal during the pandemic, to allow people to ‘continue to visit’ the country through its literary classics. Using Easing Reading, Visit Portugal gives people with intellectual disabilities access to three of the nation’s greatest works of literature free of charge at easyreadingportugal.com. The programme will be celebrated at an event in Lisbon in April, with a campaign to promote the platform running across Visit Portugal’s digital channels.

"The development of projects such as Easy Reading, to ensure travel and literary accessibility and is an important contribution to creating a more responsible, intelligent and balanced form of tourism." says Carlos Abade, president of tourism of Portugal.

Previously, translating text into Easy-to-read was a laborious process handled manually by experts, making it time-consuming and expensive. As a result, it was primarily reserved for conveying functional information, such as health leaflets and public transport messages. Dentsu Creative has revolutionised this process, leveraging Amazon Bedrock, a fully-managed service from AWS that helps organisations build and scale generative AI applications by offering a choice of high-performing foundation models from leading AI companies. 

Dentsu Creative’s technical delivery centre of excellence developed transformative generative AI applications using Anthropic’s Claude 3 family of models and Amazon’s Titan Image Generator model within Amazon Bedrock. This cutting-edge AI technology enables Easy Reading to efficiently scan and synthesise original text, ranging from classic literature to travel guides and instruction manuals. 

It simplifies and rephrases complex content into shorter, more understandable sentences while automatically generating illustrations to enhance comprehension. Additionally, the tool formats the content according to Easy Read design standards, ensuring accessibility and usability for a wider audience.

Dentsu Creative Iberia CCO, Lourenço Thomaz, adds, “The joy of literature should be accessible to everyone, and I could not be more proud to launch Easy Reading with Visit Portugal, a nation with such a rich literary tradition. It's always our mission to pioneer innovative solutions that shape culture and society, and Easy Reading marks a ground-breaking milestone in the accessibility space. Now, all rights holders and organisations can adapt their texts for the 40 million individuals with learning difficulties around the world, at an unprecedented speed and scale. This is just the beginning."