Be safe online

Be Safe Online

Everyone deserves to feel safe online, whether they are playing games, chatting through social media or watching streamed content.

Being online provides many opportunities for young people to forge connections and to globally connect with people with similar interests. However, young people with communication disabilities, cognitive impairment and low literacy levels are disproportionately at risk of online abuse, cyberbullying and scams.

Funded through the eSafety Commissioner’s Online Safety Grant Program, Scope has developed a set of communication resources and training to better equip children and young people with disability and low literacy with the skills and knowledge they need to better protect themselves online.

Easy Read uses simple language, clear information and images to make information easier to understand.

Scope has made these documents available for free to be used in schools, at home or any setting to educate children and young people about how to stay safe online.

This communication book helps people with communication disabilities engage in conversations about online safety topics.

It can also be used to report online safety concerns and abuse, as each page of the book has been aligned to the reporting form on the eSafety Commissioner’s website to make the reporting process more accessible.

How it works:

• Start from the beginning of the book and get help from a support person
• Each page has a sentence starter, e.g. “I want eSafety to help me with...”
• There are key words, images and phrases to complete the sentence and help communication
• There is a navigation panel to help you use the tool (e.g. ‘Another word’, ‘That’s not what I’m saying)
• There is an alphabet board to expand your messages

This tool supports individuals who have difficulty getting their message across (expressive communication disabilities) and those who have difficulty understanding spoken messages (receptive communication disabilities), making online safety more accessible for all.

It is designed to be used by people with:

• direct access, where the user points to or looks at the message their want to say

• indirect access where the communication partners reads each cell aloud and the user confirms which one they want to select with a yes or no.

The communication book has the following sections:

1. Help from eSafety
2. Cyberbullying
3. Image Based Abuse
4. Illegal content
5. Evidence
6. Services/Platforms
7. Numbers/Time
8. People
9. Gender
10. Age
11. State/Territories
12. Nationality
13. Feelings
14. Where can I get help?
15. Alphabet Board

What is Key Word Sign?

Key Word Sign (KWS) is a communication strategy which can be used to support children and adults with communication difficulties to understand and get their message across to others.

KWS adds signs to spoken words. Only the key words in a message are signed. KWS is not a sign language, but it borrows the signs from the sign language of the country it is used in. In Australia this is Auslan.

Key Word Sign Supports Resource

This resource is a collection of useful signs about online safety concepts and is a companion resource to the Reporting to eSafety Communication tool.

It includes:

• Line drawings of signs for online safety concepts organised into topics
• Descriptions of how to produce each sign.

How to Use:

• Identify the key words in a sentence (e.g., "Can you tell me what happened?")
• Use the corresponding sign for each key word as you speak the sentence

The communication partner should learn the signs in advance, and practice signing to become comfortable with the signs.

Download the Be Safe Online Toolkit Guidelines for more information.

Where can I buy the tool?

This tool is available to purchase in the Be Safe Online Toolkit.

We highly recommended this resource for educators, schools and organisations that support people with communication difficulties.

Our e-Learning modules are designed to help educators create accessible and easy-to-understand materials related to online safety for people with low English literacy and communication difficulties.

What You'll Learn:

• How to review and adapt written and spoken information for people with low literacy and communication disabilities to be more accessible
• How to use communication resources to support students with communication difficulties including the Reporting to eSafety Communication Tool and the Key Word Sign support resource
• Where to access the suite of Easy English documents and communication tools

The course consists of 4 online mini-modules and takes up to 2 hours to complete.

Module 1: Background and Accessibility
Discover the importance of accessible information and communication access (approximately 25 minutes)

Module 2: Plain Language and Easy English
Explore Plain Language and Easy English writing styles (approximately 15 minutes)

Module 3: eSafety Resources
Understand the role of support people and start using Be Safe Online communication resources (approximately 10 minutes)

Module 4: Tools and Strategies
Learn how to use a communication tool and apply strategies to communicate effectively about online safety (approximately 25 minutes)

Special thanks:

This project was funded through the eSafety Commissioner’s Online Safety Grants Program.

We acknowledge the valuable contribution of Tobii Dynavox in the creation of a PCS library of images related to online safety to support the development of these resources. PCS® is a registered trademark of Tobii Dynavox®. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

The Key Word Sign line drawings are brought to you by Key Word Sign Australia (Victoria). All rights reserved. Used with permission.