Belgium/FALC training courses to make texts easy to read for all: "Everyone has the right to information".
In Belgium, the ASBL Lire et écrire estimates that one person in ten has reading and comprehension difficulties. That's why the FALC.be service was set up in 2021 by ASBL Inclusion, with the aim of making information accessible to all. How can this be achieved? By transforming complex texts into FAciles à Lire et à Comprendre (easy to read and understand), and by training as many people as possible to write in this way.
To begin with, you're going to introduce yourself, in FALC, FAcile à Lire et à Comprendre. The training starts quickly. Today's students are a little hesitant, and that's normal, as they're not used to speaking orally in FALC. For the moment, they've been working mainly on the written word.
But their trainer, Anne-Marie de Vleeschouwer, is there to support them throughout the day. "A simpler word to replace 'Essentiellement'? Yes, 'Above all'.
Exercises, discussion, rereading of texts... At the end of the day, the day's students will normally be better equipped to communicate information in writing to people with reading and comprehension difficulties.
But what is FALC?
FALC stands for FAcileà Lireet à Comprendre. In fact, it's a language used to make information accessible. " It's the translation of a complex language into a language accessible to the greatest number of people", explains Anne-Marie de Vleeschouwer.
In practice, there are a whole series of rules to be observed when writing in FALC. "To use FALC language, you need to use everyday vocabulary, but without being childish. Use short sentences. Use one sentence per idea. Use frequent line breaks. You have to use illustrations...".
But you also need to pay attention to the size and color of the writing, and the space between the lines... Everything will be designed to be as comprehensible as possible for everyone.
Writing for everyone
FALC was originally designed for people with intellectual disabilities. "For Inclusion Europe, the fact that the texts were complex was a source of discrimination. So they came up with a methodology for people with disabilities.
But as the trainer explains, this type of writing is useful for many more people: "Everyone who has dropped out of school, people with a poor command of the French language, people with major learning disabilities, ageing people, people with memory difficulties..."
Writing, a democratic challenge
Pierrick is a proofreader for the FALC service. Proofreaders are people with intellectual disabilities, whose job it is to check that texts are easy to understand.
For him, FALC is a necessity. He also points to administrative texts, which are not always the easiest to understand. "FALC texts are important in everyday life. But especially for administrative documents. They're often twisted words with terms where you wonder what they mean, only they understand each other..."
For her part, Emilie is an educator in a residential service for adults with intellectual disabilities. She is taking FALC training to be able to adapt the texts she uses in her work. "We'd like to translate most of our documents, charters and conventions into FALC, as well as the individual projects we draw up for our residents.
In her view, FALC writing meets a democratic challenge. "To give people the power to act, they need to have the right to information and not be dependent on a third party. Without that, it hinders people's autonomy."
FALC first and foremost
Translating a text into FALC is not as easy as it sounds. Every word, every sentence, every expression has to be simplified as much as possible. Comprehension comes first. The choice of texts to be translated is therefore crucial. " It takes a lot of time," explains Anne-Marie de Vleeschouwer. "So we choose texts that are really useful to the people concerned.
In her opinion, FALC's future objective is to be used directly for writing texts. " What we're aiming for is for public authorities, administrations, the healthcare world and the cultural world to use this FALC information directly, so that the public concerned doesn't have to systematically depend on a third party to try and understand the information."
By the way, if you'd like to learn FALC writing, become a translator or learn to speak FALC orally, training courses are open to all on the FALC. be website. If you want a document that's easy to read and understand, you can also have your texts translated.
Source: www.rtbf.be/article
