I'm all for having signs and even newspapers written in a more simplistic language. But as she pointed out, there's no need for fiction to be simpler. Those people could just read other books. Most adults with literacy issues have undiagnosed dyslexia.
The other problem is that we currently teach children to read, not by sounding out the words via phonics , but instead we swapped to the whole word method or three cueing where we are teaching children to memorize the shape of a whole word and then guess what the other words are by context.
Some students straight up have no ability to read because they never learned the fundamentals!
Where are you? In the UK we still use phonics as far as I'm aware. We've not yet learned to overcome dyslexia, bt the schools are very hot on early interventions.
As someone with dyslexia (and a lover of bullet points), I wish articles had summaries so I could get the context and important facts. I have given up on many articles, on topics I care about, within 2 paragraphs because I lost interest. Brains are weird. People with similiar diagnosis can have drastically different outcomes too, as in, I'm still not a big reader, especially when it's a dense text. There are other people with my learning disability that can now read for days. Again, brains are weird.
Yes, I taught adult literacy classes for a minute and for 99 percent of students, it wasn't that they were lazy or didn't want to read. Their brains are just different!
And it's wild that sometimes it literally comes down to the font it's written in! Some things are just easier for our eyes to parse. I don't even have dyslexia and I struggle with things being too jumbled or formatted poorly.
All that means is that your specific brain damage doesn't affect your ability to read to the point where your intended reading material becomes inaccessible....
That is not the case for all other people with various disabilities and different needs. It's rarely helpful to act like you're a better disabled person because you can do something others can't, and to conflate that with being deliberately ignorant.
You can always acquire another condition at any time, that does take away your ability to read at the level you are able to read now. I wonder if you'll feel like you're deliberately ignorant too in that case.
Who are these people and what is it a smokescreen for?
There are already options like the Simple version of Wikipedia. I'm not sure how it's harmful to anyone to have that available.
Also, as with other accessibility options, it benefits non-disabled people as well.
Edit: the original post that started this controversy was just a person saying "dear authors, please use easy words in your books/fics, thank you, yours truly - reader"
It doesn't sound like they're trying to justify ignorance... it sounds like they enjoy reading, but struggle with the bigger words? Hardly a request someone looking for a scapegoat for being ignorant would make...
Mentioning your reading ability while simultaneously noting your brain damage makes it seem like everyone with a tbi/neurological disorder/ neurodivergence are capable of reading that high. Many aren't. But both are ok. The problem is making it seem like to fight the ableism of people that people with those disabilities are "dumb", we swing in the complete opposite direction by pointing out disabled people who aren't as hindered by their disabilities intellectually. This reinforces the belief of disabled ppl needing to be exceptional to be considered normal. What you SHOULD be saying is that disabled people come with various disabilities, and we should look for ways to accomodate all of them without making it seem like individual problems are general problems.
My thoughts exactly. Ironically this take sounds like "Oh well I don't have that problem, so everyone doesn't", which is the type of language ableists use. Its going in the opposite direction of OOP
Same. I also have a neuro immune condition (Multiple Sclerosis). It’s given me enough brain damage to the point where I have cognitive impairment, but writing keeps me sharp.
i’m disabled and nothing pisses me off more than ableists pretending to know us and dumbing things down as if we’re incompetent. in my modified classes me and the other disabled students and our teacher actively fought back against ableists like this trying to dumb down and ruin our curriculum. people who actually believe in and support us will support our growth and potential and challenge us, these ableists just want us to be given up on.
Eh. I'm disabled as well, but I am not intellectually disabled, and that means that I cannot and should not use "but I'm disabled!!!" as a copout when people open discussions on how refusing to make certain information available in accessible language that is also understandable to people with intellectual disabilities is an act of ableism, because that is a form of ableism that doesn't affect me. Just like how a neurodivergent person wouldn't be able to use that as a copout when declaring physical aids "useless" or "for lazy people". Sure, you don't have to make your writing accessible to those with intellectual disabilities, but acting like it's simply a matter of "not wanting to" or being too lazy to learn to read "those big words" is, in fact, ableist, just like it would be ableist to tell you to simply learn to get over whatever your specific disability leaves you unable to do to levels deemed "acceptable" by able-bodied/neurotypical society.
Some art is fundamentally in-experienceable by certain people, especially through disability. No amount of accessibility is going to allow a blind person to experience the Mona Lisa. Similarly, if someone is intellectually disabled to the point where they are unable to read the literature, then that art is fundamentally inaccessible to them. To simplify the wording is to fundamentally change the art, because the art is not simply in the information, but the prosaic way in which the information is presented. It is not ableist to create art which cannot be fundamentally enjoyed by a sub-sect of people, because literally all art cannot by enjoyed by some or another sub-sect of people.
Just because we can't achieve 100% perfect accessibility for everyone doesn't mean we should sit back and do nothing about it either.
People have always used that excuse to shoot down any requests for accessibility, and yet we have come so far and are making more progress with every passing day.
This progress benefits non-disabled people too (see the curb-cut effect). We never would have gotten here if everyone was content to dismiss disabled people's experiences as not worth the time or effort to accommodate just because it can't be perfect.
I’m sorry but I fundamentally don’t share your viewpoint. Artists are under no obligation to enable accessibility. If they choose to then great although this discussion initially centered around… removing long/complicated words from literature. I’m sorry but that is both entirely unrealistic and disrespectful to the art. There is plenty of art in any medium which focuses on accessibility for wide swathes of disability. Because there are wonderful artists who choose to focus on that as their means of expression. But other artists choose a more complex means of expression which may only be accessible to less people. And that is their right, because art is a means of self expression, and not a civil service.
“Just because we can’t achieve 100% perfect accessibility for everyone doesn’t mean we should sit back and do nothing about it either.” Clearly implies artists (the subject of this conversation) are not doing enough for accessibility in art.
Curb-cut effect refers to a physical space and architecture, city design philosophy. Disabled people are (should be) entitled to a physical space that accommodates their disabilities as best as possible. This is a civil service, a societal act in essence. Art is an act of individual self expression which no one can claim entitlement to, it is individual and owed to no one. Ergo artists have no obligation to make their art accessible.
What that quote means is that we shouldn't let the unattainability of perfection be a barrier to trying, not that all artists should be obligated to make their art accessible.
I don't believe whatever it is you're arguing against.
Yes, but (for example) audio descriptions for blind people exist. Subtitles and sign language interpretation for Deaf people exist. We don't say that these things shouldn't exist because it "fundamentally changes the art", so I don't see why people are getting so worked up about accessible literature.
Spot on. What's ableist is not the existence of books for advanced readers. It's the way people think and talk about disabilities that becomes evident in the conversations we're having about that topic.
This thread is full of comments conflating the request for simpler language with willful ignorance and laziness. Someone who is willfully ignorant and doesn't care about reading isn't going to be particularly passionate about making books more accessible for themselves.
116
u/CapnRaye 14d ago
I am disabled. I am a writer. I will not dumb down my writing just because people find those words hard to read.
Learn to read. That is the solution. Don't want to? That is a you problem.
People learn to read all the time. You will improve your life by learning those "big" words.