Many people look on communication as simply the process of transferring knowledge or messages from one person to another. The emphasis is on the transfer process and the method of sending the message.

If communication was that simple-if we were all born with built-in coding and decoding devices-if we all spoke the same language and all understood every word in exactly the same way-we wouldn't have many of the problems that do exist. If communication is so simple, why do we have so many misunderstandings?

Others look more deeply into the subject and consider it as 'sharing' information. The notion is that if two people share data then communication will have taken place. But sharing implies that both the sender of a message and the receiver of the message understand the content in exactly the same way. It implies that the language skills of both parties are identical.

The aim of our work is to help organisations manage the meaning of their communication-internally between staff and externally with customers and suppliers.

While there is certainly a problem with functional illiteracy in the community, we believe that much of the blame for poor communication lies not with the users of documents, but with the designers who often lack the competency to communicate with readers at their level of literacy. We contend that it is often the designers who are functionally illiterate.

Our aim is to produce documents that readers can understand and use.

While communication involves the idea of sharing, often that sharing does not take place because of the ethical issues involved.

There is ample evidence that people do not trust organisations, whether government or private enterprise. Likewise, organisational staff have a grave mistrust of the public. We recognise that documents are frequently read by hostile users and that such matters must be taken into account in the design.

Many document designers believe that all they have to do is use standard 'dictionary' English. They fail to recognise the important role of culture in the understanding of language. They impose their own culture on their methods of communication even though Australia is a multicultural society.

Australian documents must take the cultures of their diverse users into consideration. Our document testing programs are designed to maximise the effectiveness of documents across a wide range of cultures.