top of page

Industry: Rent tech

Accessible T&Cs

HousingAnywhere, 2025

Problem

HousingAnywhere’s Terms & Conditions ​comprised a downloadable PDF written in obscure legalese. They were difficult to navigate and understand.

Solution​

  • Add a navigable table of contents

  • Add plain language summaries to key sections

  • Publish online (not as PDF)

Impact

  • 4.2% decrease in customer inquiries about cancellation terms

  • Users feel supported during critical moments, increasing trust

  • Customer Care can link directly to relevant sections when responding to customer inquiries

Overview

  1. Introduction

  2. Competitor benchmarking

  3. Consulting our Legal Counsel

  4. Implementing changes

    1. ​Writing and publishing plain language summaries​

    2. ​Adding a navigable table of contents​​

1. Introduction

Legal intro

Approach

Look at specific problems, including:

  • Hard to navigate: Users can't understand what's included and navigate the 32-page document.

  • Hard to understand: Our T&Cs are written in legalese, making them long, wordy, and unnecessarily confusing.

  • In the wrong format: Our T&Cs are a downloadable PDF. Ideally, they should be hosted online, for better accessibility.

Solution​

Phase 1.

  • Add a navigable table of contents

  • Add plain language summaries to key sections

​

Phase 2.

  • Publish online (not as downloadable PDF)

  • Consider cost/benefit of plain language rewrites

2. Competitor benchmarking

Legal benchmarking

1. Competitor benchmarking

Standout T&Cs, not necessarily within our industry

3. Consulting our Legal Counsel

Legal counsel

​Summary of my meeting with HousingAnywhere's Legal Counsel.

​

Terms & Conditions​

In 2024

  • Counsel is currently working on technical additions to T&Cs, with a view to making them publicly accessible by the end of Q4 (CEO's project).

  • I will share our ‘T&Cs with plain language summaries’ (PLSs) with him.

  • In return, once done, he’ll share the newest version with technical additions.

  • Together we can compare the two and see if the PLSs need revising.

  • Then we publish.

In 2025

In order of priority:Create a webpage for T&Cs, to increase accessibility.With T&Cs + PLSs finalised and published on web page, we can look at rewriting T&Cs in plain language, if we think it’s worth the effort. The other two steps may be sufficient.

4. Implementing changes

Implementing changes

Now for the fun part: actually making our T&Cs more accessible!

​

We wrote plain language summaries and added a navigable table of contents.

©2025 by Daniel McLeod.

bottom of page