We want your comments on the ISO’s new document design standard
In 2023, the International Standards Organization (known as ISO) published a standard for plain language. For information designers, it was great to see that it recognises information design as closely linked to plain language (in fact, IIID was represented on the team that developed it).
Part 1 of the standard (published in 2023) is for general guidance, and various additional parts provide guidelines for specific contexts. For example, Part 2 for Legal Communication was published in 2025.
IIID’s involvement
IIID representatives have been drafting a new part, which will be called ISO 24495-5 Part 5: Document Design. It’s called this because it doesn’t cover all information design – just when it’s applied to documents that are mostly text. It goes into a lot more detail about the contribution of information design than was possible in Part 1.
ISO has formally appointed IIID as a Liaison Organization to the ISO Working Group developing the standards. Rob Waller (UK), Karel van der Waarde (Belgium) and Robert Linksy (USA) are IIID representatives on the ISO Working Group, and the drafting team. Other members of the drafting team are Annetta Cheek (USA), Karen Schriver (USA), and Chani Slabbert (South Africa). Rob Waller has presented this project in our IIID Conversations series, and you can view it online in the IIID YouTube channel.
The Document Design Pattern Library
In parallel to the standard, we have also written a pattern library, which explains document design features in terms of how they support the needs of readers. This will be published by IIID, not ISO. This means that it is not part of the official ISO commenting process. However, IIID would like your comments on this as well. It’s already available online at the International Plain Language federation.
ISO’s consultation requirements
The work has now reached a stage where there’s an opportunity for IIID members to comment on the draft. However, we need to use a process that complies with ISO’s requirements for this sort of consultation.
The ISO rules require IIID to submit one consolidated set of comments, so we cannot send in a range of views. The IIID team will consider all comments we receive, decide on IIID’s position, and communicate those comments to the ISO Working Group.
Your involvement
If you would like to comment on the draft standard please contact Rob Waller (rob.waller@iiid.net).
To comply with ISO regulations, we ask that you formally confirm that you:
- will preserve the confidentiality of the documents and any discussions you have with IIID in relation to it; and
- will comply with the relevant ISO requirements ― in particular, you:
- will not use the drafts for any purpose other than commenting on it to IIID; and
- will not share the draft standards with anyone. If you know others who would like to take part in the commenting, please give them Rob’s email address, or a link to the IIID website so they can get in touch directly.
You would need to make your comments by 24 April 2026.
How to comment
You will need to provide your comments on ISO’s commenting table, which you will receive together with the draft standard. We will then consolidate the comments into one coherent table, which will make it easier for us to review everyone’s comments, process them, and share them with the Working Group and drafting team.
Note that the draft standard is only available in English at the moment, but when officially published there will also be a French version. We hope that other languages will follow before too long after that (Part 1, the original standard, is already available in 10 languages).
Exciting times
The development of the ISO standards for plain language is a major development in the plain language world, and for information designers it’s great that organisations can see that language and design are closely linked.