Funding application forms can be inaccessible. To ensure our project was accessible from the outset, we created a working easy-read draft of the application. 

The team commented on the draft alongside the grant proposal and the final easy-read application was submitted with the grant application form.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/401 

The Terms of Reference for the No Research About Us, Without Us: Removing research barriers for people with learning disabilities project was co-produced by the project team. 

The Terms of Reference can support other teams that are running a research project to create their own version of this document to detail how they plan to work together in an inclusive way.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/391

When the call for funding was announced by the NIHR we knew we wanted to put together a project to challenge the barriers people with learning disabilities face when contributing to or leading research. 

We wanted to begin as we meant to go on, inclusively. We issued an open invitation to anyone interested in working together to join a Zoom meeting and plan the research. 

After the first meeting we created an easy-read summary of the discussion to support everyone to remember what was said and contribute at the next meeting. We continued this practice as we agreed the project design.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/402 

To help all team members understand what our project planned to do and in what order we created a visual timeline. We could refer to our aims and the dates we had allocated to each activity. It was more accessible than a Gantt chart.

Click here to view this file:

https://doi.org/10.48785/100/405

In this slide set we demonstrate how to plan working group activities and how to support team members to decide which working group they would like to be part of. The slides describe working groups, describe working group activity, support voting for group membership, be clear what each group will do and what the anticipated outcomes are.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/400 

It is important to involve people with learning disabilities in research projects. We have written some practical ways people with learning disabilities can have good experiences as researchers, partners and advisors in research projects. 

This guide includes advice about money, support, reasonable adjustments, communication, making information accessible, building good relationships, trust, power, person centred working.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/399 

In our face-to-face workshops we wanted to support our team to focus on impact by refining their aims, audience and key messages. We created these Campaign and Impact Planning posters to help teams clarify their goals and agree on the key actions needed to achieve what they wanted. 

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/403

As part of a project called “No Research About Us Without Us: Removing Research Barriers for People with Learning Disabilities” we examined a clinical trial against a checklist to assess how inclusive the trial was for people with a learning disability and what lessons could be learned for future trials to improve their accessibility. 

We wrote a journal article about what actions trial teams can take to improve how they design and run their trial. This easy-read guide explains what a clinical trials is, what we found and what we wrote in our journal article.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/398 

We have created a template to support smaller working groups in a project report to the main team. The template includes questions about challenges for inclusion and reasonable adjustments the team has made. It provokes reflection in the team about how inclusive their workstream is and what can be improved.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/404 

People with an intellectual disability face significant health inequalities and often access mainstream health services with poorer outcomes. We know that to gain the most benefit from the findings of research your needs have to be represented in that research. 

A group of academics, accessible information specialists, self-advocates and learning disability charities has joined together to explore and evaluate what it actually takes to work together, ensuring that people with an intellectual disability are part of the leadership and design of research.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/408 

This comic was created during the planning of a symposium which brought together three papers, each highlighting inclusive research projects with people with learning disabilities.

The comic discusses the ways research can be adapted to make it inclusive, the barriers teams have faced when trying to work together and the ways they have responded to those challenges; including the use of creative methods, questioning the underlying conceptualisation of research and challenging constructions of research leadership.  

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/406 

How can individuals, communities and partner organisations keep their identities when working with the research system? Can the public partners (or blobs) be valued and included without adapting their shape to the square academic system? 

Learning Disability England and the University of Leeds share honest reflections of their work involving people with learning disabilities in health research and articulate the changes needed in the funding system in order to ensure truly equitable research. An easy-read guide to a blog for the British Science Association.

Click here to view this file: https://doi.org/10.48785/100/406