Wen-Fu and Ya-Kuei are both the attendees of the council regarding Easy Read guides in the NPM as representatives of youths with disabilities (abbreviated as “youths”). They familiarize themselves with the artifacts through the stories in the guides, and further offer suggestions on the context of the guides in the council to make it easier to read and understand.
The youths visited the NPM through the guide Entering the World of Fairy Tales: National Palace Museum Easy Read Guide for the Bronzes. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
Many parents expect their children to be fine, sound and normal just like most of the people. This mindset could be traced back to the earlier medical model. Under this model, parents, experts and the public all attempt to fix and change people with disabilities as well as evoke the sympathy of the society without considering the former’s inherent individuality and nature. Even nowadays in 2022, most people are still biased against people with disabilities, viewing them as pathetic and in need of being saved.
One of the prejudices against them is that they totally lack the capacity for understanding.
We hope all kinds of barriers can be removed or lessened. However, intricate sentences, complicated icons, and the inefficiency of the connection between text and image not only pose a challenge for people with disabilities, but also fail to convey messages for most people. Therefore, instead of attributing communication problems to youths, the information accessibility is the prior issue to be addressed. The well-known accessibility services such as accessible toilets, sign language interpreting, and Braille are mostly physical devices, while friendly information availability and dissemination is a matter of more urgent concern.
Easy Read guides are one of the ways to improve information accessibility, translating the existing information of life, art and cultural activities, and social welfare to simple and intelligible images and texts. The major users of Easy Read guides are youths like Wen-Fu and Ya-Kuei. Easy Read information alleviates obstacles to participating events, thinking individually, and decision-making, enabling them to experience the kaleidoscopic world with less effort.
The attendees of the council were discussing the detailed sketch of the Easy Read guides for the National Theatre and Concert Hall. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
One of the focal points is that youths would be invited to serve on committees to participate in the discussion on compiling Easy Read guides. The photo shown above is from one of the councils for the Easy Read guides for the National Theatre and Concert Hall. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
“Information accessibility” is merely the first step for building an accessible society. The second step is to involve youths to the tasks of compiling and deliberating on guides, practicing the engagement of people with disabilities.
In fact, in the councils attended by youths, they tend to express themselves of their own accord, sharing their experiences and viewpoints toward specific subjects. The committee Hsiu-Chen has once responded frankly after browsing the sketch of the guides that she doesn’t like several sentences in them, “the statement of ‘to help us’ makes me feel I’m incompetent. I would prefer to say someone or something ‘supports’ us.” This notion doesn’t emerge out of thin air. It represents the efforts of the Parents’ Association for Persons with Intellectual Disability, Taiwan (PAPMH) for years to establish youths’ capacities for independent living and self-advocacy.
One of the focal points is that youths would be invited to serve on committees to participate in the discussion on compiling Easy Read guides. They offer advice on the adjustment of sentences and illustrations on the sketch, hence transforming the unilateral way of editing and designing guides. It is more crucial now for editors to adopt the opinions of users, and the editing processes should be participatory.
The participatory co-construction processes aim to take users into consideration and stand in their shoes, with committees conferring on proper alternative terms as substitutes for the current words through simple votes of the youths. Nevertheless, this democratic means is merely a point of departure for the committees to expand the discussion. “I know what ‘weird’ means, but I think people are more familiar with the adjective ‘strange.’” The analyses of and discussions on diction and phrasing as well as the final decisions are the outcome of the youths’ interaction, which has come into being through the long course of realizing a committee’s responsibilities and empathizing with others.
It is noteworthy that youths definitely devote themselves to the guides, referring to their experiences to clarify the content. They are accordingly not volunteers but committees, qualified to be paid for their efforts. Some of them disclose how they will use the remuneration without reservation when signing receipts. For example, a youth told us that they would donate their remuneration to the PAPMH to support the activities held for youths.
Initially, the Sandwishes Studio collaborates with disabled people through art projects to change the public images of disability. We have been exchanging with NPOs focusing on varied issues, making our communications with the public as interesting as possible.
The Sandwishes Studio created their first Easy Read guide in 2017 to present the exhibition Da Xi Di: Charity Art Exhibition (abbreviated as Da Xi Di) and introduce the public how to interact with the installations. It is an exhibition linking the NPOs in Taiwan and Hong Kong, of which the artists are mostly people with disabilities. The Sandwishes Studio transformed their works into colored installations, including dimensional landscapes like volcanos, hills, and rivers. With rare fowls and strange animals full of the space, the audience could put on costumes of specific characters painted by the artists to stroll through the venue.
The exhibition view of the dimensional installations at Da Xi Di: Charity Art Exhibition. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
Hsiao-Ya from the Happy Mount Colony demonstrated the clothes she painted at Da Xi Di: Charity Art Exhibition. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
The Sandwishes Studio had been established for almost five years then. Through the referring of the Sunable Access for All in Taiwan, we realized the shortage of accessible services in Taiwan’s exhibition venues. An accessible venue should be basically equipped with appropriate routes and stages set at suitable eye level height. Information accessibility is equally essential in addition to accessible spaces and physical devices.
For the Da Xi Di: Charity Art Exhibition, we invited the PAPMH and Ms. KUO Hui-Yu, who had just arrived in Taiwan from England, to collaborate on the Easy Read guide.
The PAPMH is an important organization for disability advocacy, supporting the career development of people with disabilities and organizing gatherings and events for youths to cultivate the ability to live independently. Ms. KUO has been a volunteer for four years in “Change,” a nonprofit organization established for twenty years and working to offer Easy Read services with professional illustrators. With rich experiences and resources of Easy Read, the Change builds an online gallery of images and illustrations reviewed by people with disabilities, open to institutions in need of Easy Read materials with certain amount of fee, which is one of their revenue sources.
The council for the Easy Read guide of the Da Xi Di: Charity Art Exhibition. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
The first Easy Read guide was completed under youths’ discussion at the PAPMH, of which the mode and procedure had gradually shaped our future councils for Easy Read guides. It’s inevitable that we find room for improvement when reexamining the guide for Da Xi Di today. However, this unmatured work incredibly ushered in the popularity of Easy Read within the disability rights circle and among concerned organizations, becoming the best sample for advocates to suggest governments adopt new initiatives or approaches, further promoting Easy Read services in different areas.
In the early days, organizations of disability rights would communicate with disabled people through simplified texts and images, probably for introducing meals of the day or the location of next month’s outing. The materials were usually sketches downloaded from the Internet and went with the organizers’ ingenuity. The photo release consent form used in the councils for Easy Read guides is an instance, derived from the Easy Read one used in Taipei City Yangming Home for the Disabled. In recent years, owing to lots of factors, the utilization of Easy Read services in art and cultural venues and dissemination of life information by governments have been more comprehensive than the accessible information provided for disabled people in the past. Among the influencing factors, this article expands on two of them to observe the change of the situation.
The cover of the Easy Read manual of Concluding Observations of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2017). Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Health and Welfare
The first is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) signed by Taiwan in 2014. The international convention drives government units and regional institutions to reexamine the existing tangible and intangible devices and related policies. In the quadrennial Review Meetings of the ROC’s Report under the CPRD, the Government invites experts from home and abroad to scrutinize if the domestic development in various facets meets with the principle of inclusion, equity and respect of people with disabilities.
What should be pointed out is that the committee, Yu-Cheng, who has participated in the councils for Easy Read services for several times, has attended the Review Meeting this year as well. This is the first time a youth was at the public international meeting to speak for themselves. Yu-Cheng advised that law enforcement officers such as the police and the judges should familiarize themselves with disabled people’s capacity for understanding and the causes preventing them from accessing information, instead of arresting them hastily due to miscommunication. The procedures of being reported to the police, questioned and present in court should be explained in the languages understood by people with disabilities. Furthermore, Yu-Cheng indicated that governments should offer them assistance to help them do self-selection as well as encourage them to join meetings and clubs’ events of self-advocacy. “I learned to share my experiences along with skills and knowledge for life with others. I also learned to help others, make friends, and realize other disabled people’s needs, which I think are quite essential,” said Yu-Cheng.
Serving as an interpreter, Easy Read is prerequisite in the above-mentioned meetings and events where disabled people are present. Easy Read guides are actually a form of accessible information, while long-term realistic benefits lie in the practice of youths’ social participation. Easy Read guides of various subjects represent discussions and engagements of different issues, enabling individuals to check and apply for available social benefits, visit museums in other counties, enjoy performances, and go out for a vote. If there were not corresponding accessible information, people with disabilities would not understand the content to make further decisions, even though they do have the rights to vote.
The second influencing factor may be the Easy Read guides published by the Sandwishes Studio in early days, which struck a chord in varied circles. Citizens who requested for the guides are more than expected since the initial complex information had been translated into more apprehensible content. Many institutions also found the guides helpful to other non-disabled groups, such as children, elders, dyslexics, and new immigrants who are still learning Chinese, aside from the original target audience.
Obviously, information accessibility does not merely favor people with disabilities. Never did venues, institutions and the Sandwishes Studio expect such an expansion of target audience. And the engagement of people with disabilities, just as what Yu-Cheng and other committees have demonstrated, allows them to believe in the values of themselves.
Following the expansion of the original target audience, Easy Read services are introduced into various venues as well. In addition to organizations of disability rights, plentiful art and cultural venues begin to hold relevant educational lectures in the hope that staff members facing the public would be endowed with knowledge and ability to utilize Easy Read services.
For art and cultural venues, the starting point of creating Easy Read guides may be planning lectures on related topics, such as the basic disability awareness and accessible & inclusive services. The lectures and workshops focusing on the demands of people with disabilities enable staff members to realize the importance of Easy Read as a manner of information accessibility, facilitating further collaboration between two parties.
The participation of youths and proponents for disability rights is essential for a complete council, while attending museum researchers and advisers can double check the translation of Easy Read to make the outcome more reliable. Staff members also obtain an opportunity to listen and emphasize with youths through discussions in councils. An example is that a museum researcher was eventually willing to depict the artifacts in another way instead of insisting on specific terms after joining the council and seeing how the youths argue over the texts and images.
The National Theatre and Concert Hall organized “Sustainable & Inclusive Arts Conference” to share the experiences of Easy Read services. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
The calligraphy work sourced from Shijing by TONG Yang-Tze at National Concert Hall. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
Besides, for the over eight-meter-long work How grave he is and dignified. How majestic and imposing sourced from Shijing by TONG Yang-Tze, we could definitely elaborate on the demeanor of Duke Wu of Wey based on the words; however, illustrating how one uses a brush as enormous as a mop to accomplish the work is rather enticing to youths. During the guide, we saw how vivid the youths’ imagination was when they imitated the artist’s postures of creating.
How should we find out interesting points of artifacts or works for youths? Perhaps we can acquire the knack through exercises of the workshops to gain experiences of interaction with them. A volunteer shared with us after practicing speaking and reading of Easy Read at workshops that they have learned a lot from it: “I’ve grasped lots of information and skills about guides in the past. However, I never knew the artifacts could be portrayed in this way. It’s all thanks to the youths.”
With Easy Read introduced into art and cultural venues, staff members are required to spend more time with disabled people, to learn what the focuses of guides’ users are and what phrases should be put in another way. It is also an optimal chance to change perspective and put oneself in others’ place.
To make an Easy Read guide, one can thumb through the Guide to Easy Read: Making Information Accessible and Intelligible and Easy-to-Read Design Guidebook to follow the steps, take inventory of existing resources of organizations, and determine the target audience. A draft of Easy Read guide will then emerge.
Nevertheless, there’s no Easy Read guide suitable for everyone. Even though one can refer to design guidebooks and prepare initial schedules for compiling, the creating processes of Easy Read guides are not universal design. What we can do is to design the content of an Easy Read guide according to the current needs of the target audience and the promotion goal of the organization. People with disabilities and NPOs of disability rights must be involved in the early phase of the planning of guides as well, as the saying of the disability rights circle goes, “Nothing about us without us.” It reminds all of us to contemplate on the core of Easy Read services.
A test tour guide at the National Museum of Taiwan History before a council for Easy Read guides. Photo courtesy of the Sandwishes Studio
What youths can do really go beyond our imagination. For instance, sky lanterns are drawn by youths to appeal for social equity in a chapter of an Easy Read guide regarding social benefits; some youths call for the public’s attention to elections and referendums in an Easy Read guide of plebiscites. We would not know that what disabled people care most is neither health nor work but privacy if the CRPD focus group discussion wasn’t conducted.
Youths are eager to express more than what they’d like to say. Take the councils they’ve attended as an example. A social worker at Yu-Cheng Social Welfare Foundation once excitingly mentioned that the youths used to be shy and unwilling to speak, but now since they’ve participated in councils for Easy Read guides, they can easily pour out what comes to their mind at gatherings for open discussion.
The Sandwishes Studio has created multiple Easy Read guides for all kinds of government units and art and cultural venues, exchanging more with disabled people around Taiwan. We worked with Easy Read advisor Mrs. LEE Ying-Chi to design a series of courses acquainting youths with knowledge of Easy Read, notifying them that they are required to express their ideas and suggestions in councils, for showing up in meetings is work.
Nowadays, most councils for Easy Read guides are still organized in northern Taiwan. To implement Easy Read services all over Taiwan, the public’s identification with diversity and inclusion is indispensable, apart from budgets and resources for it. With the spirit of inclusiveness, we realize the diversity in society and open our perception. Easy Read guides are not only a piece of designed printed matter, but a facilitator for cultural exchange and development of civic awareness with the engagement of people with disabilities. We look forward to more youths and associations joining us to promote Easy Read!
