Language Access Resources

A running list of language access resources on the web

Resources for Communicating with Spanish Speakers in the U.S.

• Visit Spanish Language Style Guides and Glossaries on Digital.gov to find more resources for improving how the government communicates with the public in Spanish.

Plain Language Resources

• Find more information about how the U.S. Department of Labor approaches plain language for UI on their Plain Language resources page.

  • To see more plain language definitions of UI terms produced by the Office of UI Modernization at the U.S. Department of Labor, please visit The UI Lexicon.

• Learn more about Federal Plain Language Guidelines on plainlanguage.gov

  • See the Federal Plain Language Guidelines by PLAIN for more examples of how to use active voice effectively.

• Visit this American Psychological Association (APA) Style Guide to learn more about Bias-Free Language.

Resources in Spanish

• You can learn more about gender-inclusive communication in Spanish from (Re)Nombrar, created by the Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity of Argentina.

• Academic Spanish dictionary: Real Academia Española.

• Grijelmo, A., & Merino, J. M. (2019). “More than 555,000,000 of us can read this book without translation”: Mas de 555 millones podemos leer este libro sin traducción = More than 555,000,000 of us can read this book without translation. Taurus. [This collection of essays portrays the richness of the Spanish language and presents a mix of historical, social, cultural, and economic perspectives.]

Design Resources

• If you want to design better UI claimant communications, see this Unemployment Insurance Email Template Kit, created by the New Jersey Office of Innovation and Semicolon Design Group.

• Gonzales, A.L. (2022, July 7). Why multilingual research matters. Code for America. https://codeforamerica.org/news/why-multilingual-research-matters/

• For web accessibility guidance visit World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

  • See the W3C's guidelines on “non-text content” and tutorial on optimizing images for the web.

• Equitable Name Test: An open source list of names and considerations for names to make systems more equitable.

USDR Highlights

Promising Practices in State Unemployment Insurance Digital Service Delivery, Beeck Center Digital Services Network, January 2024

New Jersey's Worker-Centered Approach to Improving the Administration of Unemployment Insurance, September 2023

Three years after the pandemic recession, signing up for unemployment still isn’t easy, NPR Marketplace, June 26, 2023