Easy Language Content on the Web: A Multilingual Perspective

Abstract

Access to information is a fundamental right and represents one of the essential pillars that the democratic functioning of societies and the well-being of every individual are based on. Since the late 2000, the international community has rightly launched multiple campaigns to promote the development and implementation of policies and guidelines on this subject. However, while multilingualism and information accessibility –understood as affordability, interoperability and availability of content for all, including people with disabilities– are often two key priorities in international and national communication initiatives, until very recently research and practice in both areas used to take separate paths. This chapter seeks to shed light on the pertinence of jointly studying Web accessibility (WA) and Easy Language (EL), which can be considered forms of intralingual and intersemiotic translation also requiring or allowing for interlingual translation. More specifically, we review existing recommendations and laws with regard to these communicative inclusion practices, to then discuss them from a multilingual perspective. Drawing upon a selected number of European websites containing information in EL, we present the different solutions identified to publish monolingual and multilingual EL content on the Web, as well as the existing challenges that deserve further attention among researchers and practitioners in the fields of localisation and accessibility. All in all, the review of the literature and the findings from our observation exercise seem to suggest a generalised lack of standardization in websites featuring EL content. In particular, we have observed a considerable degree of heterogeneity regarding web design, the type of information available in this language variety and the localisation strategy adopted.