Years ago, I, alongside Swindon People First, ran meetings at North Star College in Swindon.
We hosted a small forum with young people with learning disabilities. I spent ages on the minutes using the best picture banks available at the time: Writing with Symbols, and the Change picture bank.
Proudly, I'd hand out the minutes of the last meeting along with an audio version on ye olde cassette.
Then I watched what happened. People hurriedly stuffed the minutes straight into their bags.
Week after week, the same thing. Eventually I asked why.
The answer was simple: after the session we go to the cafeteria for lunch. If we look at these minutes, people will think we're different. We won't look like the other students.
That hit hard. Easy Read was already a visibility marker. And visibility, when you're already marked as different, gets stigmatised.
Young People Know
I probably shouldn't have been surprised.
Young people live and breathe this stuff. They know all the visual tells that show someone needs support, and they know what marks them out as different. Not in a cool, edgy way. Maybe not yet, anyway.
It's a lived reality, a constant calculation of what's visible. Being a teenager with learning disabilities, you're already marked. You don't need another way to announce it.
Fast Forward Thirty Years
Recently, as part of the Newton project, I've been, and still am, on tour around the country, meeting groups and gathering information about Easy Read from the self-advocacy movement themselves, at source.
One recent visit took me to Brighton and Hove Speak Out.
And that feeling came up again.
A young man was talking about the questionnaire we were working from. He said he wouldn't look at it on the bus, because it would mark him out for the same scrutiny. Even with a simpler symbol set, colour photographs and hopefully more skilled application, it was still something he chose not to engage with in public.
But, he said, he would look at it on his phone. It's more private. And he can listen to the audio version at the same time.
Now We Have Tools
Most of us have a phone. He wouldn't be marked as different just by holding it with his headphones on.
Accessibility doesn't have to be visible. It's not performative, not age-inappropriate. Just a young person on the bus looking at his phone like anyone else.
We now have tools to deal with this. Digital formats, audio, the power of voice and the power of the phone. It's not all about paper.
A Challenge for All of Us
This isn't about Easy Read failing. It's a challenge for Easy Read to look like something widely used by everyone.
But it's also a challenge for society to accept formats, difference and reasonable adjustments without judgment.
There are challenges on lots of different levels.
The real work isn't fixing Easy Read to look "normal." It's building a society where difference doesn't need to hide.
This is something I want to keep exploring as I visit groups for the second and third time.
How do we use the tools we have to make accessibility genuinely accessible? Not just delivering information, but delivering it with dignity and privacy too.
