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PEREGO, ELISA. ACCESSIBLE COMMUNICATION: A CROSS-
COUNTRY JOURNEY. BERLIN, FRANK & TIMME, 2020, 195 PP., ISBN
978-3-7329-0654-3
We are surrounded by information transferred via a variety of media.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes
everyone’s right to «receive and impart information and ideas through any
media and regardless of frontiers» (United Nations, 1948). Yet, to this day, as
we are aware, information is not always made accessible to all. Persons with
disabilities often encounter barriers in a society that is still inaccessible, e.g.
images without alternative text on social media, uncaptioned videos, public
transport with no passenger alert systems, among others. These examples
show how accessibility services are key to granting everyone’s autonomy to
partake in all life experiences in equal conditions.
Perego’s book, Accessible Communication: A Cross-country Journey
(2020), focuses on an emerging access service: Easy-to-Understand (E2U)
language. This is aimed at making content more accessible to a wide range
of potential users, such as persons with reading difficulties and/or cognitive
disabilities, migrants, and foreign-language learners. Writing in E2U language
or adapting texts to this language mode entails not only phrasing texts in a
clear(er) manner, taking into consideration both the lexical and the
morphosyntactic levels of language, but also formatting information by
following specific guidelines that facilitate communication, i. e. making it
accessible.
E2U language may be understood as an umbrella term encompassing
features of both Plain Language and Easy-to-Read language. The Plain
Language movement started in the 70s and was originally a response to the
language used in legislation and jurisprudence, although its scope was later
expanded into other fields. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 defines Plain
Language as «writing that is clear, concise, well-organized, and follows other
best practices appropriate to the subject or field and intended audience» (US
Public Law 111-174, 2010). Easy-to-Read language started as a way of
adapting content to persons with cognitive disabilities and reading difficulties.
From the start, Easy-to-Read was found in different types of texts, including
non-specialised texts such as literature or the press. Among other
organisations, Inclusion Europe (2020) has provided guidelines and even a
checklist to make sure that documentation follows the principles of Easy-to-
Read language. Writing or adapting content to Easy-to-Read language means
using frequent lexicon, avoiding words which include difficult syllables,
avoiding abstract or foreign words, as well as metaphors, irony, proverbs, or
idioms (Bernabé & Orero, 2019). As for syntax, Easy-to-Read language
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prioritises short, non-complex sentences that avoid the passive voice and
progressive constructions, as well as verbal periphrases, whenever possible,
among other features (ibid.).
Perego’s book is structured with six chapters accompanied by an
introduction and conclusions. Chapter 1 defines accessible communication
and delves into the notions of Plain Language and Easy-to-Read Language,
presenting their target audiences, areas of application and guidelines currently
available. The chapter illustrates the linguistic and textual features of E2U
language. As it stands, the main limitation of the chapter is the fact that English
is the only language considered in the examples, even though some of the
measures proposed to assess readability are language-dependent—the lack
of literature dealing with these aspects in depth, however, makes this limitation
understandable in a first approach to the matter. Likewise, some language-
and content-independent strategies are also presented by drawing on
previous research (p.49). In the last part of the chapter, the combination of
E2U with other access services is considered, namely subtitling for the D/deaf
and the hard of hearing and audio description. This is in line with the fact that
the book is part of an innovation project aiming to apply E2U language to
audiovisual access services, called the Easy Access for Social Inclusion
Training (EASIT) project
1
.
Chapter 2 is devoted to the EASIT project. This was a three-year
(2018–2021) Erasmus+ Programme led by Anna Matamala, from the
TransMedia Catalonia research group, at the Universitat Autònoma de
Barcelona (Spain). The consortium included eight partners from both
academia and the media industry, as well as third sector organisations
working with persons with disabilities and reading difficulties. The project's
main output was the launch of a platform of open-access educational
materials to contribute to the training of professionals working with E2U in
combination with subtitling, audio description, and audiovisual journalism.
These materials can be consulted on the project’s website.
Chapter 3 explains that «a crucial stage of the [EASIT] project was to
obtain information on the current European scenario regarding general E2U
training and practice» (p. 93). To pursue this aim, a questionnaire following
E2U guidelines was designed and distributed by EASIT researchers. This
project phase was led by Elisa Perego at the University of Trieste, one of the
EASIT academic partners. In Chapter 3, the author reports on sampling and
other methodological considerations taken into account in the design of the
questionnaire. The transparency with which methodological steps are
1
<https://pagines.uab.cat/easit>.
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presented in the book makes this chapter extremely helpful for any researcher
interested in using E2U questionnaires as a research instrument. The final
questionnaire is also available on the project’s website in Catalan, Galician,
German, Italian, Spanish, Slovene, and Swedish.
Chapters 4 and 5 present the questionnaire results, which received
answers from 128 professionals working in European countries. The results
are presented globally in these chapters. In other words, answers from all
languages and countries involved are discussed together. Other research
publications derived from the EASIT project have discussed the results
obtained for specific languages, such as Catalan (Arias-Badia and Matamala,
2020) and Spanish (Arias-Badia and Fernández-Torné, 2020), among others.
Chapter 4 focuses on the professionals’ profiles. What follows is a summary
of the most frequent profiles found when analysing the results: most of the
participants were women (over 70 %) aged 41–50. The three languages in
which E2U seems to have spread the most are German, Spanish, and
Swedish. Experts typically hold a postgraduate degree in Languages,
Communication or related areas, and have followed extracurricular workshops
on E2U language. They have between three and six years of experience in
E2U language and mainly work as freelancers, which is telling about the
emerging nature of this access service. The most frequent areas of application
of E2U language are public administration and education. They do not
typically work on audiovisual media. Respondents were also asked to provide
their insights on prospective training for E2U experts. Their answers on the
matter are included in chapter 5. They discussed the activities they had found
most valuable in their training to become accessibility experts, the theoretical
background needed, and how to improve their own skills, among other
aspects. A result worth highlighting is that some professionals are seldom in
touch with end-users to gather feedback on their text production or adaptation,
whereas they believe that a deep knowledge of users is an indispensable skill
for prospective professionals.
Chapter 6 introduces the course curricula developed in response to the
EASIT project. Courses were informed by the results of the survey presented
in Chapters 4 and 5. The chapter describes the skills that trainees should
possess upon finishing an educational programme, the elements composing
the unit devoted to E2U language, and shows how the approach to course
design was connected to the results obtained.
Getting to know current professional practices, as achieved in the
survey conducted in the EASIT project, is an essential first step to
understanding where we stand now and how we want to train future
accessibility experts. The book opens new research avenues and calls for
future studies to account for the training needs connected to E2U in different
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languages. While the monograph focuses on training and the profession,
some of the results derived from the EASIT project also demonstrate the need
to further explore the reception of E2U texts with end-users. Do different
approaches, adopted in different settings, result in better or worse results in
terms of reception? What is «accessible communication», from the users’
perspective?
Perego’s book demonstrates the potential of E2U language as an
emerging service that will likely be increasingly applied to multiple formats
very soon. The author’s clarity in describing the work process entailed in the
initial stages of a teaching innovation project funded by the EU is also one of
the main strengths of the monograph. The book is, therefore, an invaluable
contribution to the fields of audiovisual translation and media accessibility and
would be a useful read for researchers, students, and practitioners alike.
R
EFERENCES
Arias-Badia, B. & Matamala, A. (2020). Audio Description Meets Easy-to-
Read and Plain Language: Results from a Questionnaire and a Focus
Group in Catalonia. Zeitschrift für Katalanistik, 33, 251-270.
Arias-Badia, B. & Fernández-Torné, A. (2020). El experto en lenguaje fácil de
comprender: un nuevo perfil educativo y profesional en el ámbito de la
lengua española. Monografías de Traducción e Interpretación, 12, 295-
312.
Bernabé, R. & Orero, P. (2019). Easy to Read as Multimode Accessibility
Service. Hermēneus. Revista de Traducción e Interpretación, 21, 53-
74.
Inclusion Europe (2020). Easy-to-read Checklist. https://www.inclusion-
europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Easy-to-read-checklist-
Inclusion-Europe.pdf
United Nations (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
US Public Law 111 - 274. Plain Writing Act of 2010. [An act to enhance citizen
access to Government information and services by establishing that
Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly,
and for other purposes], Office of the Federal Register, National
Archives and Records Administration, 13 October 2010.
[B
LANCA ARIAS-BADIA]
