The Language of Inclusion
Have you ever signed a consent form without understanding what it said? That is what happens for many people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities (IDD) when we use language that is hard to understand. Important information gets lost when we use long sentences and hard words. People get left out of decisions about their own lives. – Impact
The new issue of Impact takes a close look at plain language – communication that is clear enough for the intended audience to understand it the first time.
Plain language is more than a writing style or accessibility tool, the editors write in the issue. It moves important information into the hands of the people who can use it, a key part of knowledge translation.
Awareness about plain language is growing, including an understanding that keeping people from knowing information about their health, their job, or their education is disability injustice. And yet, a lack of training, standards, and resources is holding back progress, issue authors say. And while more organizations today involve people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities (IDD) in the process, it doesn’t always happen that way on a meaningful level.
“Plain language takes time, because you need to ask people with disabilities to review it,” Liz Weintraub writes in the new issue. “If you don’t ask for input from people with disabilities, though, what good is it?”
Weintraub, senior advocacy specialist at the Association of University Centers on Disabilities , wrote articles and served as an issue editor, along with Becca Monteleone, co-creator of the Plain Truth Project and associate professor of disability studies at University of Toledo; and Jerry Smith, director of communications, marketing, and dissemination at the Institute on Community Integration, which publishes Impact.
Advances in artificial intelligence could dramatically speed the creation of more plain-language resources, but there are caveats.
In an article on the potential of artificial intelligence to “move beyond the limits of static plain language,” Rylin Rodgers, Microsoft’s director of disability policy, argues that people with disabilities can and should play a key role in co-designing this future. “AI shifts the experience from one-directional reading to interactive understanding,” Rodgers writes.
Other challenges include a lack of training and differing views about how to do it right. The field needs research on how people use plain language to make decisions and what techniques are most helpful. It also needs clear definitions and better measurements of outcomes, the authors say.
Articles in the issue highlight efforts to standardize plain language and share details on how several organizations create plain-language materials.
Julie Rawe and Lisa Seeman-Horwitz, co-facilitators of the Cognitive and Learning Disabilities (COGA) Task Force for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) share their thoughts on new plain-language standards in the W3C’s forthcoming version of its Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 3).
Organizations, including Green Mountain Self-Advocates and the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, offer strategies for creating plain-language resources, and authors from Inclusion Europe discuss how they use these materials in advocacy, along with pointing out times when plain-language materials don’t live up to standards of clarity.
Writing about her work creating a plain-language version of a book by noted author Alice Wong, who died in 2025, Kelsie Acton talks about how she grappled with profanity used in the book.
“Alice’s delight in language and delight in shocking people was part of the fabric of that book,” the London-based researcher writes. “After years of working in disability dance spaces with artists with IDD, I was all too aware of the way they were often infantilised or policed into excessive politeness.” Check out her article here, where she goes deeper into the issue, eventually landing on the need to know one’s audience in order to create plain-language versions that are useful.
As always, Impact contains personal stories written by people with disabilities. In this issue, many of them share their experiences creating plain-language versions of materials for advocacy organizations.
Weintraub, who wrote a memoir using plain language (All Means All: My Life in Advocacy ), shares her frustration with the slow progress being made to make information accessible, despite the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990’s assertion that people with disabilities have the right to information and the 2010 passage of The Plain Writing Act.
“Plain language isn’t ‘there’ yet. People don’t care enough about it,” Weintraub writes. “Some of us, and a few national organizations, care about it, but I can tell you there are still so many disability meetings I go to, and I don’t understand what they’re talking about. And then I think, ‘This meeting isn’t for me.’”
Created in 1988, Impact is ICI’s flagship publication. It is produced in a collaborative process with authors from around the disability field, including researchers, service providers, academics, and people with disabilities and their families. It is available in print and digital editions. Click here for a free subscription.