Around 60 people attended the event, mainly Easy-to-Read validators and facilitators, and several stakeholders interested in this field. In the event, Train2Validate partners showed the evolution of the project from the starting point in 2020 until the current learning materials and platform that will provide a real training for these professional profiles in accessibility.
The official opening was held by Óscar García Muñoz, General Project Manager of the project, and Nevenka Kos, vicepresident of Zavod RISA, the T2V Slovene partner, and Easy-to-Read validator. Kos highlighted the importance of Easy-to-Read as a tool for social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities and reading difficulties.
In the opening, the event all received the online participation from Milan Šveřepa, director of Inclusion Europe, and Sandra Marques, E2R expert from Fenacerci (Portugal). Both pointed out that technology has provided solutions to speed up Easy-to-Read translations, and therefore governments have no excuse to avoid this responsibility. However, the role of users testing the resulting content is even more important to check the quality and comprehensibility.
Accesible information as human right
The keynote of the event corresponded to Ulla Bohman, Easy-to-Read consultant from Sweden, who is one of the main references in Europe in the field and that was a relevant member of the staff of the Swedish Centre for Easy-to-Read. In her conference, Bohman defended accessible information as a human right crucial for participation, making choices and speaking up. She also mentioned the importance of learning by doing and working together with the target group to obtain better results in the Easy-to-Read contents.
A round table with Easy-to-Read facilitators and validators from different Slovene organizations was one of the main parts of the events because their testimonials were useful to understand their real work, difficulties and the need of a homogeneous and certified training to open new employment opportunities.
After that, project partners explained the main achievements. Tatjana Knapp, Zavod RISA director, explained the assessment process of the learning materials and the platform, where 35 people from 5 countries participated positively. Materials and the platform are easy-to-use and understand, although the digital skills can condition some participants. On the other hand, Gabriele Sauberer, ECQA president, detailed the certification possibilities for both positions and the steps for this purpose. After these presentations, all partners sat in a round table to comment the evolution and main results of the project.
Finally, Elisa Perego, professor from the University of Trieste (Italy) and member of the T2V Advisory Board, held the closing conference, where she exposed all the Erasmus+ projects that have been developed in the last years related to accessible communication and the relevance of Train2Validate as a driver to highlight the role of final users in the production process.
With this last event, Train2Validate embarks in a real adventure to promote new professions in the field of Easy-to-Read. The project concludes on August 31st. It is expected that the platform with the courses will be open with the learning materials for facilitators in English, and the learning materials for validators fully in English and partially in German, Italian, Romanian, Slovene and Spanish.
