Nelengvas kelias iki lengvai suprantamos kalbos - The road to easy-to-understand language is not easy

Editorial information: Lietuvos žmogaus teisių centras.

Easy to understand language – is still little known in Lithuania. However, thousands of people need it. From the beginning of 2024, this language has become a mandatory method of applying information.

In 2023 In December, the Lithuanian Audio-sensory Library presented the first fiction book in Lithuania, adapted for readers experiencing comprehension difficulties.

These achievements are an important breakthrough for the rights of people with disabilities, but the road to implementation has not yet been completed. What is an easy-to-understand language, why is it needed, what new opportunities does it open up and why do some people see it as a danger?

Literature is just one of the fields that uses easy-to-understand language. The main goal of the method is to provide a person with a disability with the necessary information so that he or she can make every day and essential life decisions, from taking medication to financial planning or choosing where and with whom to live. Decision-making support specialists have recently appeared in Lithuania, who use easy-to-understand spoken language and textual information to help people with disabilities live independently.

Lithuania undertook to provide accessible information to people with disabilities in 2010, after ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, but in national law, the obligation to adapt information in an easy-to-understand language was only included in legislation regulating elections a few years ago. From this year, according to the Law on the Basics of Protection of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the Republic of Lithuania, all public institutions will be obliged to provide information in ways accessible to all citizens (in Braille, sign language, easy-to-understand language, etc.)