Management response and action plan: Enhancing accessibility in written communications

A review of forms and letters for the Social Security Tribunal by the National Self-Represented Litigants Project

	Recommendations	Response	Action	Person(s) responsible	Completion date
1	The SST should draw on the detailed comments from the readers employed by the study to inform continuous improvement of letters and forms.	Accept	Review of language is an ongoing continuous improvement exercise. Upon further study of Appendix E commentary, applicable comments may be integrated into ongoing form and letter revisions. Evaluation will create a tool to facilitate the analysis and use of comments made by the study’s readers.	Director, Registry Operations Manager, Evaluation	Ongoing as part of continuous improvement Completed
2	The SST should address the officious tone in the letters.	Accept	In line with the actions outlined as a response to recommendation 1, comments identified regarding tone will be addressed and may be integrated into ongoing plain language revisions of forms and letters.	Director, Registry Operations	Ongoing as part of continuous improvement
3	The SST should identify additional information that users may need to be able to both comprehend and follow instructions in both letters and forms. These issues are highlighted by Question 2 (for both forms and letters) and Question 7 (for forms only) of the participant questionnaire.	Accept	Plain language is a central tenet of the SST ’s mandate, and forms and letters are regularly reviewed. While the ultimate goalpost of plain language forms will continue to be forms that are clear enough to need no explanation, we will continue to review best practices and assess other improvement opportunities.	Director, Registry Operations Director, Corporate Management	December 31, 2023 and ongoing as part of continuous improvement
4	A number of readers commented on the usefulness of additional informational resources including infographics and video. We have found that among self-represented litigants at large, visually attractive and accessible resources are very popular.	Accept	Areas where visual tools would be helpful will be identified through further study of commentary within the plain language report as well as from the SST ’s client satisfaction survey. Tools identified will be created and posted on the website. It will be necessary to consider how to provide these tools to the approximately 30% of clients who lack access to the internet.	Director, Registry Operations Director, Corporate Management	Infographics by March 31, 2023 and ongoing as part of continuous improvement
5	Many readers commented that it would be useful if both the letters and forms could be hyperlinked to further resources on the SST website. Drop down menus with these options were suggested for the forms. These links could provide (for example) a glossary of terms, and more detailed explanations of processes possibly using flow charts or other visuals, posted on the SST site.	Accept	This recommendation will be addressed by the planned actions in recommendations 1, 2, 3 and 4.	Director, Registry Operations	December 31, 2023 and ongoing as part of continuous improvement
6	Some readers and focus group participants suggested that sample versions of the forms, filled out with hypothetical circumstances and posted on the website, would be very useful to give people a sense of what they “should” look like.	Accept	This recommendation will be addressed by the planned actions in recommendation 2.	Director, Registry Operations	December 31, 2023 and ongoing as part of continuous improvement
7	The SST should offer self-represented users an appointment to complete their forms with guidance from staff (limited to legal information).	Partially accept	Currently, the registry responds to questions from appellants about various SST forms, including the Notice of Appeal. We cannot, however, complete the form on behalf of appellants. The SST will also look into other opportunities to make forms easier to complete.	Director, Registry Operations	Completed
8	Some of those in the focus group expressed a need for clarification on the security of personal information when this is sent electronically to the Tribunal. We recommend that a short note be added to the forms and on the website explaining the steps the SST has taken to ensure the security of claimants’ information.	Partially accept	The Tribunal’s forms contain statements about security. Any future revisions to the forms or website will consider the need to strengthen these statements.	Director, Registry Operations Director, Corporate Management	March 31, 2023 for website and ongoing as part of continuous improvement
9	The SST should offer a live-chat function on the website for real-time communication with claimants.	Decline	Clients receive accessible service from live persons.
10	The SST should offer greater descriptive clarity behind the term “navigator”.	Decline	Navigators explain their role to clients at first contact and their role is described in Tribunal letters to navigated parties. This will be revisited following the independent study by the University of Windsor and Laval Université.
11	The SST should establish a permanent SST working group involving self-represented claimants in regularly reviewing new communication resources.	Decline	The SST will look for opportunities to consult with our stakeholders when we update our forms and letters. The SST is also working to include more SRL representation in our stakeholder community.