The second meeting of E-T-R reading groups in Catalonia
gathered 200 people (jan -09)
Easy-to-Read Network Conference 2009 (nov -08)
Welcome back to
the Easy-to-Read Network web site.
Finally our web site is working again! (nov -08)
An association for Reading Representatives
is being built up in Finland (oct -08)
Reading Representatives in Finland:
"Reading is magic!" (oct -08)
My Opinion My Vote - Many
with learning disabilities don´t wote (sept -08)
The Norwegian Easy-to-Read Centre,
Leser søker bok has started a collaboration
with two prison libraries (sept -07)
Publishing Easy-to-Read Books:
The viability of a project with a social sense
Frankfurt International Book Fair on the 11th of Oct (sept -07)
European learning partnership for easy-to-read newspaper (feb -07)
Text, reader and society - Adult reading from different perspectives
- conference in Stockholm 200 (dec -06)
How to make an easy-to-read newspaper
- the 8 SIDOR (8 PAGES) has now produced a material
on how to make an easy-to-read newspape (2006)
- I want to explain what is difficult! - Karine Nicoaly works
at the Belgian easy-to-read newspaper Wablief (2006)
Easy-to-Read comes to Romania
- a small Swedish delegation visited Targu Mures
in Transylvania, Romania (2006)
Is Easy-to-Read useful for reaching persons with dementia? (2006)
The second meeting of E-T-R reading groups in Catalonia gathered 200 people
The Easy-to-Read meeting took place in the Biblioteca Nacional de Catalunya the 29th of November 2008. It was organized by the Easy-to-Read Working Group and the Associació Lectura Fàcil (Easy-to-Read Association).
The meeting consisted of a performance led by an actress specialized in social theatre techniques. She invited the audience to play some of the characters of the ETR book “El nou món de la Sandy” (“A new world for Sandy”). It tells the story of a Latin immigrant girl who starts a new life in an European city. Many people volunteered to become actors/actress for a while.
The performance was a success. The participants of the E-T-R reading groups have some reading and comprehensive difficulties. They are recent immigrants, adult learners, elder people, mentally handicapped people, etc. The meeting was supported by the the Worker’s Union, the regional Government, the Municipality of Barcelona and the Librarian Association of Catalonia.
How do the E-T-R reading groups work?
The Easy-to-Read groups meet once or twice a month to share and enjoy the reading of a book by means of improving and practicing the participant’s language skills in Catalan and Spanish. All the books used are Easy-to-Read.
In Catalonia there are more than 30 E-T-R reading groups. Public libraries have a prominent role in their organization in collaboration with the Easy-to-Read Working Group, located in the Librarian Association of Catalonia.
Associació Lectura Fàcil
Associació Lectura Fàcil (ALF) was established in 2003. During all these years it has become an information and reference centre of Easy-to-Read books in Catalonia and Spain. ALF promotes the production, publishing and diffusion of Easy-To-Read materials. The 2008 catalogue includes 80 titles in Catalan and Spanish. ALF also offers training courses and workshops on ETR writing in Spanish and Catalan.
We invite all Easy-to-Read network members to visit ALF’s website: http://www.lecturafacil.net
This is a proposal concerning a conference gathering Easy-to-Read Network members from all countries. The Centre for Easy-to-Read in Stockholm is prepared to initiate and plan for a conference next autumn.
Perhaps we could have the conference in Milan in August – September 2009 in conjunction with the IFLA conference. (IFLA – International Federation of Library Associations.)
The Centre for Easy-to-Read is willing to be the primary organizer of the conference. The IFLA meeting in Milan is August 23 - 27, 2009. If we decide to locate our conference to Milan the idea is of course to adjust the dates to the IFLA meeting. The Easy-to-Read Network conference might be immediately before or after the IFLA meeting. Or maybe our meeting could be a satellite-meeting to the IFLA meeting.
The proposal is that we meet for about two days - perhaps starting in the evening day 1, work the whole of day 2 and end up by lunch day 3.There are quite a few issues for us to discuss.
We suggest an agenda including these issues:
- Agreement and formal body
- Network web site
- International definitons, standards, network-logo
- Guidelines
- Cooperation and partnership – ongoing projects, new ideas
- Funds – EU etc.
- Research – old and new topics, how to initiate new research
- New technology – how can easy-to-read benefit?
- Promotion - how can we promote easy-to-read and the network?
- Support of initiatives in new countries
We need to know if there is an interest in an Easy-to-Read Conference in August – September 2009.
1. Are you interested in attending the conference?
2. How many delegates would you send?
3. Any suggestions for the agenda?
4. Is Milan a good idea? Any other suggestions of location?
Please answer to annmarielindman@hotmail.com
Our web site is finally working again and now we hope to have many visitors.
Correct addresses
We would like to urge all members to check their addresses under the heading “Members” at the top of the page, to the right. Please contact us if the information is wrong.
Links to homepages
We would like to have links to any homepage relevant to easy-to-read. Please forward all information about organizations and associations dealing with easy-to-read or similar areas in your countries.
Easy-to-Read in your country
Have a look at the texts written below the heading “Here you can find information about Easy-to-Read in different countries”. You find this at the bottom of every page on the site. At present there is information about Sweden, Finland and Norway. We wish to expand the information and we would like texts from more countries. Please write to us and tell us about easy-to-read in your country!
News
We are looking forward to reading news from all countries! Tell us what’s happening! New activities, decisions, books, papers, projects etc.
The Easy-to-Read Network web site is dependent on contributions from its members! Send all your information to annmarielindman@lattlast.se
Our web site address is:
http://www.easy-to-read-network.org/
There is also a link to the Easy-to-Read Network from the homepage of the Centre for Easy-to-Read in Stockholm:
www.lattlast.se
A project aimed at building up an association with Reading Representatives started about 1 ½ years ago in Finland. Money was granted by a Culture Fund. The target group is Swedish speaking people with an intellectual disability. This group is not large – only about 2.000 persons.
There was not enough money to employ someone to work fulltime in this project. The leader of the project, Johanna von Rutenberg at the LL-center in Helsinki, contacted three women from different parts of the country. They are all three professional caregivers working with intellectually disabled people – and they are also reading enthusiasts
Christina Grönroos in Nyland, Christina Grönholm in Åboland and Maria Pitkäkangas in Österbotten were each given 50 easy-to-read books to use in their project work. 
Together with Johanna they went to Stockholm, Sweden, to attend a course for two days in January 2007. They also made a study visit to Kista outside Stockholm – to the local library there and to a daycentre for the intellectually disabled.
Back home in Finland they got more LL-education and inspiration from Johanna. They also surveyed actual reading activities at different daycentres and groupliving apartments for their targetgroup. The results showed that reading only exists if there is a devotee working at the unit. Reading activities depended completely on these devotees among the employees.
After being educated Maria and the two Christinas took their piles of books and travelled out into reality.
Two of them built up two small easy-to-read libraries – one at a daycentre in Helsinki and the other at the large institution Kårkulla vårdhem (nursing home) in Pargas, Åboland. People from different units in the respective areas can now come to these libraries to borrow books or they can reserve books and have them sent by post. 
Maria donated all her books to an ordinary, local library in Närpes, Österbotten – but with some categorical demands. The library was required to include the easy-to-read books in the set of books and other materials delivered by the book van. The library must undertake to buy new easy-to-read books in the future and also the librarians were asked to arrange some sort of easy-to-read area with books, information, a sofa, a table etc.
In connection with the deliveries of the books to the libraries the three women also visited almost all daycentres and groupliving departments in their areas to give information to the employees about the reading project.
Johanna von Rutenberg is now going to apply for more money to enable the project to continue. People know a little more now. But there is still no established Easy-to-Read Activity for the intellectually disabled. Johanna would like money enough to employ someone fulltime. That is the only way to be able to fulfil a more systematic work.
Ann Marie Lindman
Centre for Easy-to-Read, Stockholm
Reading Representatives in Finland: "Reading is magic!"
- The feedback in Åboland has been very favorable, says Christina Grönholm about the project to build up an association with Reading Representatives. Christina works at Kårkulla nursing home in Pargas.
- Apart from Kårkulla, a nursing home quartering 90 people, there are 25 units in my area, daycentres and groupliving apartments, recounts Christina.
She is one of the three Reading Representatives working to establish the project in Åboland in the south of Finland. Christina phoned all the units and asked the employees to reflect on their reading habits at work.
- I told them I would return to them soon with more questions.
- And I did. But the result was piteous! Most of them had no reading habits at all.
Now, one and a half year later, things are different. 24 of 25 units took active part in the project from the beginning. Today 14 units have timetabled, steady reading. In those places where reading is no longer so common, the reason usually is that the responsible employee has left the unit.
Christina has arranged two reading-meetings, each of them at three different places and the influx has been good. She chose to build up a new, small library at Kårkulla nursing home with the 50 easy-to-read project-books as a foundation.
- After all, Kårkulla is where most of the people in the target-group live, says Christina. There are 90 residents at Kårkulla.
A couple of public libraries in the area have taken interest in the project. The library in Kimito has taken the initiative to buy a number of easy-to-read books and the library in Pargas, too, has bought a range of read-to-read books and this library has also opened a special easy-to-read area for these books.
Christina Grönholm is not a novice when it comes to reading. She has been reading in all her groups since 1983.
- There is something magic about reading, she says. It is like the air is all still around you when you are reading.
Ann Marie Lindman
Centre for Easy-to-Read, Stockholm
My Opinion My Vote
Many people with learning disabilities don’t experience any political participation as electors and don’t exercise their right to vote. The Equal Opportunities Centre for Disabled Persons is participating in an EU funded project that aims to modify this situation.
The overall objective of the project is to educate people with learning disabilities to get aware of their political rights and to form and express their informed opinion on the occasion of local, national and European elections and referenda, as any other European citizen. The project will be made in a partnership between nine organizations in six European countries.
In the project people with learning disabilities and researchers from the six participating countries will design, develop and test an educational programme composed by two modules and ten educational units about politics and voting. An awareness raising campaign will also be launched, addressed to people with learning disabilities themselves, their families, professionals, decision makers and political parties. The project aims to foster dissemination and exploitation of the results to as many people with learning disabilities as possible, through setting up a permanent observatory of the exercise of political rights of people with learning disabilities.
There will be a project website; we will let you know when it is up and running.
Questions about the project can be adressed to cj@clh.dk or tmj@clh.dk
Kind regards,
Camilla Jydeberg
The Easy-to-Read Network has now a site of its own. There were quite a lot of technical problems in the beginning but now everything seems to work. Here in Stockholm we hope that next year will be a more active one that this year has been.
We will be very happy for all sorts of contributions to the site! Let us all share news and ideas from different countries. Do write a few lines to the Easy-to-Read Network whenever you have something to tell your fellow members! We would also like to welcome several new countries to the Network. We are now 69 members in 27 countries.A piece of news from Sweden is that another network has started. This is a (so far) Swedish research network called Text, Reader and Society. It is going to deal with reading and reading problems among grown ups in working life and society. The network has received half a million Swedish crowns (about 53.000 Euro) for three years´ work (2008 – 2010). I am a member of this network, representing The Centre for Easy-to-Read. At the moment there are 15 members, most of them active researchers. We are going to meet twice a year. So far we have had two planning meetings. The first “real” meeting will be in May 2008.
Best wishes from the Centre for Easy-to-Read in Stockholm
The Norwegian Easy-to-Read Centre, Leser søker bok has started a collaboration with two prison libraries recruiting Red Cross visitors as reading representatives.
Visitors are volunteers who are trained by the Red Cross enabling them to have a unique access to prison inmates. By joining the network of reading representatives organised by Leser søker bok, visitors now use literature as a valuable means of communication with inmates. Visitors sometimes struggle to find meaningful topics of discussion with the inmates, so reading books or magazines with them instead can be very rewarding.
Studies show that more than 27 percent of Norwegian inmates have minor reading disabilities, whilst 10 percent report to have severe problems. Further, many of the youngest prisoners under the age of 25 have little or no education. Reading representatives for this group can therefore be a large benefit and improve the inmate's chances of employment when returning to society.
So far, Moss Prison Library has four reading representatives who have taken on the exciting task of reading for inmates. They have read short stories by well-known contemporary Norwegian writers such as Ingvar Ambjørnsen and Lars Saabye Christensen, and both inmates and visitors are very enthusiastic about the new project. They look forward to try other texts as well. Kongsvinger Prison Library has also four visitors ready to start and has appointed the prison vicar as a reading representative as well. Leser søker bok hopes that more prisons and visitors will join the network!
(17 sept -07)
Presentation: A professional of Stadtbuecherei Frankfurt am Main professional will present the reading promotion policies of this institution. 30 minutes aprox.
Round table: “A challenge for the knowledge society: Approaching the reading to all”
Moderator, Eugènia Salvador from Associació Lectura Fàcil (ALF). 5 minutes.
Participants in the round table:
1. Rosa M. Falgàs, ACEFIR, (Associació Catalana per a l’Educació, Formació i Recerca). Author of the Catalan learning method for illiterate immigration “El nostre món” (“Our world”)
Analysis and presentation of their method to alphabetize immigration in the hosting country language. 10 minutes.
2. Carme Mayol, ALF. “Reading, a right and a pleasure”.
Presentation of Associació Lectura Fàcil which promotes the production, publishing and diffusion of Easy-To-Read books for people with reading and comprehension difficulties. Achieved projects and future aims. 10 minutes.
3. Ralf Beekveldt, Eenvoudig Communiceren. Presentation of the European partnership on Easy-To-Read topics and the first product created as a network with six European countries: the climate special. 10 minutes.
4. Manuel Garrido, Piratas de Alejandría. “20.000 miles through the sea of stories”.
From the big Library of Alexandria, where all books were kept, we start a trip around Europe through the Word. An experience of mediation and reading promotion: how to make the reading an experience, an emotion and an adventure. 10 minutes.
Words and conclusions.
The possibility to arrange a Network meeting on 11 October in Frankfurt is still unclear. We still do not know if enough people from the Network will attend. Nevertheless, if intersted people gather ideas for the future work and plans for a conference/meeting next year are most welcome. See the proposed agenda. Please let me know if you are going to Frankfurt. Bror Tronbacke, Director, The Centre for Easy-to-Read, Sweden.
Proposed agenda:
Follow up
Planning for a Conference 2008?
If you are interested in displaying Easy-to-Read materials during the presentation please contact us at lecturafacil@cobdc.org
For more information: Associació Lectura Fàcil
lecturafacil@cobdc.org http://www.lecturafacil.net/
At present four of them are in the process of creating a pan-European web-based newspaper. The first two years of the Socrates/Grundtvig 2 partnership
have been devoted to exchanging ideas, making an inventory of the present status of easy-to-read language in Europe and creating effective working methods.
Mats Ahlsén, editor in chief 8 SIDOR
Text, reader and society -
Adult reading from different perspectives
Around 40 researchers gathered in Stockholm for two days in October to discuss reading and writing in adult society and
working life. The main point of the konference was to make a start on developing a new network in this field including reading researchers from different disciplines.
Four keynote speakers were invited: Professor David Barton, Lancaster University, England, Professor Kjell Lars Berge, University of Oslo, Norway, Professor Stefan Samuelsson, Linköping University, Sweden and Registered speech therapist Ulla Föhrer, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm. The conference was arranged by the Stockholm Institute of Education, the Swedish Language Council, the Department of Applied Communications Science / Stockholm University, the Stockholm School of Economics and the Centre for Easy-to-Read.
Photo: Professor Mats Myrberg, Stockholm Institute of Education, was one of the arrangers.
How to make an easy-to-read newspaper
The 8 SIDOR (8 PAGES) has now produced a material on how to make an easy-to-read newspaper.It is available from us. If you are interested, please contact: ann-marie.lindman@lattlast.se 
This is an attempt to make a list of practical hints and suggestions for those involved in editing an easy-to-read newspaper or planning the publication of one. Hopefully it will encourage and facilitate the emergence of new easy-to-read newspapers by describing target groups, technical solutions, cost levels and editorial strategies. Great care has been taken to ensure that low-cost as well as more expensive alternatives are described. "How to make an easy-to-read newspaper" is based on more than twenty years experience of publishing 8 SIDOR.
- I want to explain what is difficult!
- Already when I was studying at the University, and had to read and read again to be able to understand, the thought occurred to me: Why don’t they write in a more easy-to-read way, says Karine Nicolay.
Today, many years later, Karine Nicoaly works at the Belgian easy-to-read newspaper Wablieft. 
The paper is written in Dutch which is one of the country’s two main languages. The French speaking population can read L’Essentiel, also easy-to-read news. Wablieft is funded by the by the Belgian government and gives Belgians the possibility to read news that everyone can understand.
- I wanted to extend myself, learn more from others and also develop our own work with easy-to-read news.
So Karine asked for, and also received money from the EU to begin a co-operation with other easy-to-read newspapers in Europe. The money comes from a EU project called Socrates/Grundtvig.
So far, editorial staff members from the different newspapers have met three times, once a year, since 2004. The newspapers participating in the project are: 8 SIDOR from Sweden, Klar Tale from Norway, LL-bladet and Selko Uutiset from Finland, Okee from the Netherlands and Overblik from Denmark. From England there is also representation from the Plain English Campaign.
During three very intensive days in April, they all met up in Stockholm, invited by the Swedish easy-to-read newspaper 8 SIDOR (8 PAGES). There are among other things, plans for a joint venture, an Easy-to-Read newspaper covering all European countries.
- To be able to explain what is difficult, that, is my aim, concludes Karine.
Swedish Center for Easy-to-Read comes to Romania
Between the 6th and 7th 2007 of April a small Swedish delegation visited Targu Mures in Transylvania, Romania. The purpose of the trip was to introduce the 
easy-to-read concept and hosting was the Oasis Foundation, who had also arranged a press conference, a two-day seminar and a short meeting with the Mayor of Targu Mures.
The City Council of Targu Mures was seriously interested in easy-to-read and is planning a short but regular easy-to read version of their information to the inhabitants of Targu Mures. The two-day seminar included information on how the Swedish Centre for Easy-to-Read is organised and a workshop on how to write Easy-to-Read.
A group of about twenty people participated both days, many of whom were professionally involved in writing for people with different kinds of learning or reading disabilites.
A working group for Easy-to- Read in Transylvania has now been formed and we hope for further co-operation in the future.
Photo: Mr Bror Tronbacke, Director of The Centre for Easy-to-Read
and Ms Ilona Gorog, Psychologist from the Oasis Foundation who also hosted the event.
Is Easy-to-Read useful
for reaching persons with dementia?
Communicating with persons suffering from dementia, reaching into their world, and enabling them to reach out of theirs, how can that be achieved? This is a question that a team of researchers is currently looking into in Stockholm. 
In this case, the team is focusing on the usage of Easy-to-Read texts.
The main question here is whether Easy-to-Read texts facilitate communicating with this group.
The group taking part in the research consists of four women, aged 75 to 93, all suffering from dementia. Also participating in the study is
a reading representative who also is a staff member at the nursing home where the four women live. They are all, therefore, well acquainted with each other.
The reading representative reads aloud to the women from the novel The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas.
Initially the group of women listened to the original version on four different occasions over a three week period. After that followed two weeks with no reading at all. Eventually they listened to the Easy-to-Read version of the novel on four further occasions, also over a three week period.
All sessions were videotaped using two cameras. One camera singling out each individual and the other registering the whole group.
The next phase will be to thoroughly analyse the content on the videotapes made from the reading sessions. Do the films show the reactions of the listening women? What reactions are there? How can we understand their reactions? Will they confirm the idea that the Easy-to-Read version is best suited for them?
Here you can find information about
Easy-to-Read in different countries: