This toolkit illustrates the importance of health literacy, and offers suggestions and guidelines for improving the readability of consent forms and other materials in the health and science fields. It offers information on plain language, including strategies, alternatives to complex terms and links to other resources. It also contains a quick reference guide and editing checklist, and some template language for consent forms.The material is largely focused on United States-based research activities which would involve communication for the purposes of participation in a study or trial and which must be HIPAA compliant, but the principles may be of interest to anyone investigating clarity of communication in health and science generally.