Step By Step: Creating Autism-Inclusive Health Walks booklet

Paths For All support people in Scotland by creating inclusive opportunities for everyone to walk, connecting communities and helping people live healthier, happier lives.

This guide to creating autism-inclusive health walks is aimed at coordinators and walk leaders. Members of the autism community were consulted on what they thought was essential for walk leaders to know and understand.

It was important for the booklet to be engaging as well as accessible, with large clear type (that avoids large blocks), clear headings, high contrast, clear section differentiation and colour-coding. The styling also adheres to PFA’s brand guidelines.

I also created accompanying illustrations using PFA’s existing library of characters, dropping them into scenes and creating other illustrated elements. The autistic community suggested that they found illustrations of people more relatable and easier to connect to than photos.

The guide is published in both a printed and screen version. These vary slightly with the screen version having interactive contents page and hyperlinks to further information, whereas the print version has a QR code linking to online resources.