COVID-19 public health information on Victorian government websites during the first year of the pandemic was often too difficult to understand, a La Trobe University study has found.
The study found the material communicated on two major government websites, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education and Training, rarely met federal government accessibility guidelines.
Using readability tests, researchers found an education level of year 10 or above would have been required to understand much of the content.
According to the federal government, roughly 44 per cent of Australian adults have a reading level equivalent to year 10 or below.
Accessibility guidelines state that government communications should be suitable for someone in year 7, to cater to differences in English ability, education level, disability status and access needs.
Lead La Trobe University researcher Tanya Serry said a "significant chunk of the population" would have struggled to understand the material, which sometimes required a tertiary level of education.
"This was critical content about when and where to wear masks, vaccinations, when children can and can't go to school — the information that's being shared publicly and that the whole community really needed to have access to," Dr Serry said.
"If people don't have access to what government recommendations are and health recommendations are, there's more likelihood that those misconceptions and falsehoods and conspiracy-type theories — there's a risk they might be more believed."
The study analysed the content of 367 different web pages on the two government websites.
Wilfred Wang, a media and communications lecturer at the University of Melbourne, said he was not surprised by the study's findings.
"Throughout the pandemic, a lot of us struggled to make sense of the information up there [on the websites]," Dr Wang said.
"It's not the most attractive and easy to navigate webpage for anyone, let alone people from diverse linguistic backgrounds or with low literacy levels."
He described the COVID-19 section of the Department of Health website as "very wordy", and said it was often difficult to find key health advice.
Dr Wang conducted separate research into older migrants' experiences with digital health communication during the pandemic in Australia.
His research found older migrants relied more heavily on their communities than official channels of information.
Government defends public health messaging across trains, online and social media
A state government spokesperson said Victoria's public health communication throughout the pandemic had not been limited to information on websites.
"Throughout the pandemic we have communicated to Victorians in every way possible, whether that's through the media, social media, traditional advertising, online advertising and even messages at train stations," they said.
"Victoria continues to invest in culturally specific and in-language messaging to reach diverse and hard-to-reach populations.
"This includes in-language advertising promoting third doses which are currently running on multiple channels and platforms, partnerships with key services, running dozens of information and training sessions with community leaders, providing COVID-19 information in over 50 languages, and supporting over 100 organisations with a grants program to address community concerns and drive vaccination uptake."
The spokesperson said Victoria had one of the highest vaccination uptakes in the world because of these measures.
