Chrissie Maher was born the fifth of six children of her parents and grew up in Pringle Street, Tuebrook, a poor area of Liverpool.
She knew that there were many adults like her who had not had the chance to learn to read and write properly and decided to help these semi-literate people who were desperately short of money to fill benefit forms.
[9] In 1971, Maher founded the UK's first community newspaper, the Tuebrook Bugle,[10] which gave her the chance to write articles demanding that organisations start using plain English.
In 1974, Maher started The Liverpool News,[11] the UK's first newspaper for adults with reading difficulties.
In 1994, as an example of the linguistic issues she found objectionable, Maher pointed out that Britain's National Health Service published a definition of the term bed that used 229 words.