AXSChat Podcast with Rocío Bernabé Caro & Óscar García, from the EU co-funded project Train2validate

Rocío Bernabé Caro holds a professorship in barrier-free communication at the International University of Applied Science of the SDI München. She has a MA in Translation (UGR) and a MA in Accessible Documents, Technologies and Applications (UNIR). The topic of her PhD was easy audiovisual media services for all (UAB). She is Deputy Head of the Professional College of Translation and Interpreting of the SDI in Munich (Germany). She was the project leader of the EU co-funded project Live Text Access, which aimed to create certified learning materials for real-time intralingual subtitlers by respeaking and velotyping. She was project partner, accessibility manager, and leader of the Intellectual Output (IO) 2 of the EU co-funded project EASIT, Easy Access for Social Inclusion Training. She is a partner and IO leader of the EU co-funded project Train2validate. Her newest research focuses on easy Internet and end-user-centered validation processes. She is also involved in the ISO standard for Plain Language and the German DIN standard for Easy-to-Read

Óscar García is project manager at Plena Inclusión Madrid and leader, a third-sector organisation that supports and defends the rights of people with intellectual disabilities. Óscar García has a degree in Journalism and a postgraduate in Universal Accessibility. He has been translating contents into easy-to-read for 12 years. In this time, he has published handbooks in Spanish such as “Lectura fácil: métodos de redacción y evaluación” (Easy-to-read: writing and assessment methods) and “Guía práctica de orientaciones para la inclusión educativa: lectura fácil” (Handbook on guidelines for educational inclusion: easy-to-read). He translated into Spanish the IFLA publication “Guidelines for easy-to-read materials”. Among the contents that he has translated into easy-to-read, he produced the Spanish Constitution, several acts, museum publications (Museo del Prado, among others), medical leaflets and vocational training handbooks. He is also member of the Spanish standardisation group that published the standard UNE 153101 EX about easy-to-read contents production.

Transcript

0:01

This is a draft transcript produced live at the event and corrected for spelling and basic errors. It is not a commercial transcript. AXSCHAT Oscar García Moñoz and Rocio Bernabe

NEIL: 0:09

Hello and welcome to Axschat. No Debra today, she is enjoying the last of Zero Conference in Vienna, but I'm delighted that we are joined by Oscar García Moñoz and Rocio Bernabe. And you're from Train to Validate. So, welcome. Can you please tell us a little bit about yourselves and what Train to Validate is because I am sure our audience would love to know?

ROB: 0:31

Yes, thank you, very much for the invitation. And first of all, my organisation is Plenainclusion, Madrid which is actually an organisation which supports the rights of people with intellectual disabilities. And from that we have developed the Train to Validate project. This is an Erasmus Plus Project, supported by the European Commission and the goal is to create a certified programme training for validators and facilitators in the field of Easy to Read. So, what is this, what is Easy to Read, first of all and what are validators and facilitators, it's a methodology that tries to communicate contents in an easier way for people with reading and learning difficulties. There are many people that are under this circumstances, not only people with intellectual disabilities, but we can think about also, migrants without native language of the country or also, for instance, elderly people. So, in this way, this methodology creates a systematic process in which they involved similar roles. The first of all are the translators which are professionals that apply certain guidelines from the originals into the new version in Easy to Read and then there are the validators, which are people with reading or learning difficulties that check does that the translated contents are really understandable, comprehensible. And in between, the role of the facilitator, which is the supporter of the validators that helps in the organisation of the work by the validators. So, what do we want to do is to create a certification because we want that validators and facilitators become a real profession in this field of accessibility.

NEIL: 2:41

Excellent. That is great to know and I'm passionate about making stuff easily understandable. Being dyslexic and ADHD, firstly too much text, I lose interest. But secondly also, I prefer to have complex ideas explained in simple language. And I think that actually if you're really expert at something you can make something complex quite simple. I think it's a sign of expertise. So, I also think that you're right; the importance of this goes well beyond disability. I think when we were looking at COVID, for example, easy to read documentation and information was really important and I thought that actually the government of Argentina did a really good job of doing easy to read information. Now, I don't speak Spanish and I don't read Spanish. I can work out stuff from European languages, but their easy to read information was immediately comprehensible to me as a non-native. So, I think that it enables people just to be able to access and process information no matter who they are and especially with something as crucial as COVID in the early days, could be the difference between life and death. So, credit to you for the work you're doing. It's also an area we are super interested in, we had Rachel Boyack on, only a few weeks ago, who helped get the Plain Language Law in New Zealand passed into law. So, again another similar approach, but not quite the same as the Easy to Read approach because Easy to Read has more elements and maybe you would like to explain the difference between Plain Language and Easy to Read?

OSCAR: 4:41

Rocio?

ROCIO: 4:42

Yes, thank you, very much for inviting us today as well. Just to myself, I just, I work in the University in Munich and I have been working in the field of Easy to Read for a couple of years now. And one of the first questions people ask what is just that what's the difference between Plain Language and Easy to Read language and they have similarities, but there are differences. Plain Language is a language, it's a style actually. It's a writing style. So, you write a text. Using mainly lay words. So, it's more focused on using the complexity of the vocabulary you're using and on the other side, you're using all these layout strategies that we have at hand to simplify perceiving content. For instance, we use good headings. You organise information accordingly. You use lists, you use bigger fonts and stuff. So, this is one point, layout, Plain Language and Easy to Read have in common. You have similar layout strategies in Easy to Read because it's just way our brains work. They just, layout help us to find information and organise efficiently but when it comes to Easy to Read, you have certain rules or recommendation or guidelines, this depends on the country. And that you have to follow to make sure that the content is really accessible for persons with reading difficulties. For instance, we have the rule that lines should be short, one idea, and one line. One, you always have full top or you have punctuation at the end. You explain words that are unknown; you try to be as concrete as possible. I don't know. You avoid using aggregation and special characters and there are many, many, many. But, really, when you see a text on Easy to Read, I think the main thing is the type of sentence, you try to always to use subject, verb, object and then you have one idea, one line or one sentence and then, you usually also have in Easy to Read is that you use pictures in order to support understandings. So, in Easy to Read, you often have the picture on the left which is more or less the idea of the topic for your paragraph and then you have the text about this. So, the main difference, Easy to Read have these rules and Plain Language doesn't have it. But layout they have in common, I would say, if you would.

NEIL: 7:39

Yes. The illustrations are a key part of Easy to Read and they certainly, when I was using the example for Argentina with COVID, the illustrations were part of what made it comprehensible for a non-Spanish speaker. I think that with Plain Language there is already quite a lot of work going on and language simplification with AI models, there's a real opportunity to help you to help use the emerging technologies to simplify language and increase comprehension etc. When it comes to the illustrations maybe we could be doing the same because, now if you think about the fact that you can also use AI to generate imagery, there might be the opportunity to start translating and creating the supporting images as well, which I think would be a relatively new thing because how are the images done now. Are you going to stop illustrations or are you having to every time you want to create a document, bring on board an illustrator to re enforce your points?

ROCIO: 9:03

There are the many aspects. Go ahead Oscar?

OSCAR: 9:07

Actually in the question of illustration, it's very important first of all, that you don't think that people that have really difficulties, have any similar like as children, so, like, the child you illustrate a content with an Easy to Read that is very important because one of the reasons why the Easy to Read methodology started was to cover the need of people, the adults that had reading difficulties. But, when they went to the library they actually said, the book for your competencies is on the shelf in child and yes, and young people. So, imagine in our case for instance, people with intellectual disabilities, 40 or 50 years old work. Some of them work. Some of them have one life with experiences that are very far for a child then with illustrations, if you include certain once that are childish they reject it. So, it's very important and also, as we do the validation, this process of checking that the contents are understandable we also check the illustrations. Do they match with the content? This is very important, avoid for instance the illustrations that only try to be nice but don't add any content and are very abstract, for instance also. They have to be concrete and specific focus and complimentary to the content. So, this is some things that are very important and also, we try to insist in the difference between illustrations for instance and pictograms, Because pictograms have also a specific use for people that cannot speak aloud and they have to point out what they want to say and this is a system, very useful system for people with these communication needs. But, it is not extended, it should not be extended to other formats as Easy to Read.

ROCIO: 11:27

Yes, I think really illustrations are just so hard topics because you have so many things. You just said before, you know artificial intelligence creating the pictures or the images. But they really need to meet some, you cannot just take anything. You cannot just you know, let the artificial intelligence search the Internet for a picture of a car because then you have the problem is that the car, a police car in Germany looks different from a police car in Spain.

NEIL: 12:00

No, I fully understand and I understand that that is also a challenge for symbol dictionaries. So, a lot of work gone on for symbol dictionaries means that you have to have different symbols dictionaries based upon cultural context as well. No, I understand that and I'm not suggesting you use the AI just to search for images but actually things like DALI and so on can create images. So, what I am suggesting is that you could use some of the text simplification tools to create, simplify text content and then you could also use that simplified text content to potentially generate an illustration which you would then validate as being meaningful or matching. And it might mean that you would then have something that is more scalable than because I am imagining there is quite a lot of manual effort that goes into creating at the moment.

ROCIO: 13:00

Yes, I think that's the way it's going to be anyway, now the technology is there for years. We have been waiting for this type of programmes and I think, right, I was just reading, but I think that is the way it's going to go. The problem, other problems that we have to solve is the copyright. Who has the copyright of such an image if it is created like that and I use it in my publication, is it still free or is it created contents. I don't know.

OSCAR: 13:37

I also would like to add that artificial intelligence opens many solutions and many questions in which we cannot avoid the human participation. For instance, in the case of Easy to Read, we can produce artificial intelligent images, images with artificial intelligence, but you need to check with people that they are really understandable or useful for the one that you have. So, in our case for instance, in the Train to Validate project the development of technology is complimentary to us because people with reading difficulties or learning difficulties will also have to work there to check if the solution that produced the artificial intelligence is also understandable.

ROCIO: 14:30

Yes, I think another point for me, I have to try to used DALI, I have to try to use it, it is whether you can tell the context, you know because as Oscar was saying before, we should avoid using pictograms but yet when we are on the Internet, we have to use pictograms because the user is expecting to see the envelope for sending an email or some other ones we use. So, these should be along, go along with this you know. Where are you going to be publishing the information and feeding the machine so that the machine gives you the right output, you know.

ANTONIO: 15:11

I am currently using an App on my phone that is resuming books through images. So, when I am say at the coffee shop. When I am you know, doing something or even travelling by bus, I can open this App and it allows me to resume details of the main content of a book that I want to learn about. And maybe I might want to know about this book and read it fully later. So, what I want to ask you, when you are doing this type of work, what you believe are the principles to make sure that the content is as engaging and allows the reader to immerse itself into the content instead of just, okay I am making the language. I am making sure that everyone can read this. But how can I actually make it interesting?

OSCAR: 16:16

Good question, Antonio because that is the core of our work actually. We have to make a balance between understandability and the original message. There are many words already in literature, Easy to Read literature, you have in Spain, for instance, the first one was Don Quixote, translated into Easy to Read. But you have many other books in other languages, classic books that also translated into Easy to Read and they keep these this aura, this original thing of the book. Also, for instance, we have done political programmes. And, we keep the original ideas independently, the wing of the party of the political party. So, we make understandable respecting always the original message. We are mediators and, we cannot influence the original message because, what we do is to try to translate what somebody who finds it difficult to express himself or herself wants to communicate to a specific focus public, which is people with reading or learning difficulties.

ROCIO: 17:44

Sticking to the job is really important because otherwise you're just communicating the wrong message. And, whether the person in the end likes the way you're writing the poem or Romeo and Juliet is in Easy to Read and I found this wonderful. But of course, the reader has the last word. But we try to stick to the text or the text type. Yes. It's hard sometimes.

OSCAR: 18:13

Very.

ANTONIO: 18:17

We see, sometimes in the world of technology, people coming up with many solutions that are avoiding the future how we use the Internet. The way how we consume content and sometimes those methods or those pointers to the future, they don't look like to be going into a very inclusive way, you know in the way let's say, in a few years everyone is going to use virtual reality and those solutions in order to engage. What I like to ask, how to you see these methods contribute to democratise how people use the Internet services and how people communicate and learn across the Internet?

OSCAR: 19:05

Rocio?

ROCIO: 19:06

Good. What a question. The thing is when you were talking a minute, a thing that was popping into my mind is that we talk about this future and engaging and virtual reality and on the other hand people can still not buy a ticket for the bus properly. So, I don't know what to say, you know, where do we start? Do we start with the virtual reality or do we start with the very basic needs we have at the moment. And in the case of Easy to Read, I think they are not quite covered. Oscar you want to say something?

OSCAR: 19:47

Yes, actually Easy to Read covers parts of needs but it's also important that developers think that they should keep setting patterns in order to develop tools and solutions. For instance, Rocio has mentioned, how to buy a ticket. It's a bit crazy for everyone, not only for people with difficulties that when you want to buy a text for the cinema or theatre processes are different independently of the website or the company. That you have to learn every time something new. Think about if the person has reading or learning difficulty. It's a challenge, a continuous challenge every time, Neil, I knew [dash]

NEIL: 20:39

For me, I struggle with interfaces. It's something that you know we were passionate about when we were doing the user research of the public accessibility task force that needs to be stuff that is unambiguous, you need to understand the menus and the design needs to give you the affordances that you can, well, I need to do this. Now, even if companies want to differentiate themselves by having slightly different things, they still need to give those affordances, give that clarity to users to be able to do that. I had a great example today, we are travelling and we need to get a boarding pass and in the App, there were about five different routes that you would have to go through to get the boarding pass to actually sit in the wallet of the phone rather than inside the App and it was not clear. So, you have to go through a very counter intuitive process to be able to do the things that you need to do. So, I have been, I work in technology and I'm struggling with it. So, we do, I think we can fall into the trap of thinking well technology solve all the problems and actually sometimes it can layer on additional problems. So, I am with you in that actually a well-crafted Easy to Read poster might actually explain how you can buy your ticket better than you know a really fancy App where your ticket is embedded on the App or whatever. I think there's probably a bit of both.

OSCAR: 22:24

But think about also, Neil that it's interesting that you have the instructions in Easy to Read but what about if this kind of processes would be standardised everywhere because, I understand that different companies have their website in different ways, of course because they have their target, there are advertising and marketing system. But certain processes as how to buy a ticket or how to get a boarding card always the same. Why should I learn in different companies and a different way to get the same thing for instance?

NEIL: 23:02

I agree. There should be expected behaviours of systems and we got quite a lot of push back on that because we were constraining people's design autonomy and so on. I think, I mean that is not uncommon with accessibility where people complain that we are giving them too many constraints. But users would be thankful for consistent behaviours across systems. You just look at, you know television menus, you know, because something that is really ubiquitous, even more ubiquitous than a computer is a Smart TV. All of those menu systems are different and 99% of them are crappy and hard to use and not very intuitive. So, again if there were consistent behaviours for things like that, I think that would be really, really helpful because the likelihood is that even and most people have more than one TV in their household. I have two Sony TV’s; this is not an advert for Sony. But they are of similar age and one more expensive and the other but they have different menu systems because one has got the expensive menu system and the other one has you know the cheap and cheerful menu system. So, you can actually confuse yourself using stuff from the same manufacturer.

ROCIO: 24:35

Yes, I think it all comes down to the facts we still have base a lot of awareness about what are the consequences when you don't deal with this. I've heard this many times, just what you were saying. If I go for an accessible website, it's going to be boring and it's going to look like every other website. Well, this is not the case; it's just going to help you. And in the end, you come up with economic argument you know, if you do it accessible you're going to have more users of your web page and then they're interested again. Then say, oh yes, right and then I get so many users, which shows me that we still have to do a lot of awareness about what is, you know being accessible is actually an advantage instead of a disadvantage.

OSCAR: 25:26

In the case, for instance, you have mentioned Neil the different menus, what about the wording? Why the same setting is named under different words? Why not the same word for the same setting? That is for instance also a question and it is connected with Easy Language in the way of Easy to Read, Plain Language. A so simple decision as the same word for the same concept, it's a guideline but it is so common and so logical, it becomes so logical, why shouldn't it apply, this standardisation with the wording in the settings? It will be also a very good idea to develop in all kinds of technology, or instructions or everything.

ANTONIO: 26:19

Why do you think this is happening? Do you feel that if a government needs to build a system, they need to consider citizens? And citizens they have, it's basically everyone, while brands, they look at people, consumers and they might say, oh, our target is a certain type of person. What is, actually how should brands look at this, in order to actually change their approach, in order to make communication easier for people to be able to consume and buy their product?

OSCAR: 27:02

I would suggest an agreement through standards, we have an international standardisation organisation for instance that promotes these kind of technical rules and what about agreeing a list of vocabulary standardised for certain words. It surely exists but what about connecting it with certain kind of branding saying I match this kind of goal or I match this social responsibility? So, I think that we have to match, I understand the companies have their economic interests but this is not far from the idea of social responsibility in our days, so it's an easy decision I think. It's very easy to include and develop.

NEIL: 28:01

So, I think these things are easy in principle. Having being part of standards creation and updating, they're harder in practice. But I am in favour, but I am also not kidding myself that creating standards and gaining consensus as to what those thousand words might be, could take quite a long time. But, I do think that when you, when you look at the impact that that might have, in terms of people being able to complete tasks and especially when you're doing this for a government or whatever, then as Antonio mentioned citizens being able to participate in their rights or being able to do things, there's a payback for the government. But there is also a payback for commercial organisations because the cost of failure is not often countered but it's quite significant. So, if you're a commercial organisation and people don't, aren't able, they can get to your website, they can look around but they are not able to complete the process. That is lost revenue.

ROCIO: 29:11

Yes.

NEIL: 29:13

And every time someone you know, fails to complete a form or gives up, again you've already invested money getting them to the website, getting them to start completing the form and then probably you have to guide them, chase them up, follow them up, use human intervention or you've lost them altogether. So, there are all of these costs of not doing it as well. I think they're often not appreciated. So, mindful that we've hit our half hour buffer already, which is amazing because it seems that we only started five minutes ago. What are the next steps for something like Train to Validate? It's Horizon funded, you know, where do you go next with this?

OSCAR: 30:02

Yes, we had developed skill stats for both professions and a curriculum for both professions and we have a started creating the learning materials and the platform. We are going to develop in Google classroom the platform for these materials which are mainly video recordings, with accessible materials for instance, titling, transcripts and our points with accessibility requirements and also, tasks to, so that the student, compares that they have understand and they have learned what it is stated in the interlaying materials. At the end, the idea is that we want to match with a certain kind of certification, one of our partners is the European Certification and Qualification Association and we want to develop this kind of certification with them. So that, all people that goes through our training, in Train to Validate facilitators and validators can receive the certification at the end. So, the project ends this year and we expect to publish the course in English in June, July and in the other national languages of the parties, which are respectfully German, Slovak, Romanian, Spanish and Italian. Yes, there will be, surely at the beginning of next year.

NEIL: 31:36

Okay. And do you have a target? Even, if it's a soft target, of how many people you would like to see certified?

OSCAR: 31:46

Yes, targeting a number of people you mean?

NEIL: 31:51

Yes. How many people would you like to see get this certification, what would be transformative?

ANTONIO: 31:58

Our dictionary.

OSCAR: 31:59

We can do that in Spain, the development in the different countries are different. But for instance in Germany and Austria, there is a very large development through organisations like [unclear] and in the case of Spain, my company, Pleaininclusion is quite strong or for instance, only in Madrid we have already a group of 200 validators, certification. So, if they certification, they would be 200 people and we receive very often requirements and demands of new courses to train new validators. So, if it is linked to a certification, it would more interesting because think about people with intellectual disabilities have the highest employment rate among all disabilities. This is a very important for us for inclusion in employment.

NEIL: 33:04

So, you're also driving employment. That is great. So, thank you very much. It's been a fascinating chat. I need to thank MyClearText for keeping us captioned and accessible. And also thank Amazon for supporting us. And I really look forward to joining you on Twitter to continue the discussion.

ROCIO: 33:21

Thank you so much.

OSCAR: 33:22

Thank you very much.

ROCIO: 33:24

Bye.