iDEM interview with European Disability Forum – Advocating for inclusion in democratic processes

Democratic processes in the European Union and its member states often fall short of being fully inclusive. Accessibility barriers continue to, directly or indirectly, exclude many from participatory processes. Alejandro Moledo, Deputy Director and Head of Policy at the European Disability Forum (EDF), guides us through what people with disabilities and those experiencing language barriers encounter when attempting to vote or stand for office. To present solutions and improvements, he includes us in the work EDF has been doing to promote accessibility and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. 

Listen to the full interview here: 

What is EDF and what does your role as Head of Policy and Deputy Director entail? 

The European Disability Forum is an organisation bringing together the European disability movement. It is an umbrella organisation representing people with disabilities, made up of entities led by people with disabilities and their families. Its mission is to ensure that all people with disabilities are considered in decisions affecting them, following their motto nothing about us without us. 

Alejandro Moledo coordinates advocacy work. He supports all colleagues in their campaigns and leads the movement on political participation to ensure all people with disabilities have the right to vote and stand as political candidates. He also supports the European Parliament Disability Intergroup. 

iDEM hopes to increase the inclusion of people experiencing language barriers in political participation. What work is being done by EDF to promote participation in democratic spaces?

The European elections are one of the world’s biggest democratic exercises, they are actually 27 different elections. There is diversity in elections across the EU, such as different ways to vote or to conduct elections. These imply different legal and practical barriers to participation.

Legal barriers include the findings presented in EDF 6th Human Rights Report 2022: political participation of persons with disabilities. Out of 27 member states, only 15 legally ensure that all people – including people with disabilities – can vote. Solely 10 of these countries safeguard their right to stand as candidates. These obstacles need to be addressed nationally, but EDF is also advocating for a reform to the European electoral law. 

Practical barriers include limitations with understandability, namely the level of complexity of information that voters receive. The EU commission has tried to improve the situation by improving legislative measures and non legislative measures. Examples of the latter are their Guide of good electoral practices in Member States addressing the participation of citizens with disabilities in the electoral process, and the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. The aim of this framework is to legislate common levels of complexities in documents shared with the public. 

In your experience, has advocacy positively impacted accessibility in democracy in the European Union?

Successful work by EDF led to their collaboration in writing the EU’s Guide for good electoral practices in Member States addressing the participation of citizens with disabilities in the electoral process. EDF’s 6th Human Rights Report of 2022 proved to have an impact on countries, such as Luxembourg, which was negatively reviewed in the report. This country changed their electoral law to grant all people with disabilities voting rights, they also improved their measures on understandability and accessibility. This resulted in a change to the report.

The most impactful, however, is always legislation. If understandability requirements are included in legislation, progress is possible. The challenge with making understandability legislation at a European level is that understandability differs much from language to language and reality to reality. This means that the technical standards necessary to support legislation are too complex to be generalised for general adoption.

Are there any recommendations you would like to share with civil society organisations or public administrations to strengthen democratic accessibility across Europe?

Civil society organisations (CSOs) should lead by example. Don’t use complex language whenever possible in public communication. Make information as understandable as possible, there are tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), you can use to do this. 

Public administrations, including the European Union, need to set priorities and acknowledge that different people have different communication needs: 

• Plain language
• Easy to Read 
• Sign language 
• Braille
• Audio formats 

Alejandro recommends public bodies to set quantitative targets for their communication efforts, so the most relevant information is more accessible for everyone. Mainstream the processes inside the organisations to make them more accessible. Administrations should also invest in professionals that can support them with easy language, plain language or sign language. Finally, he reminds organisations to invest in the capacities of the people working in communication. 

Thank you so much Alejandro and EDF for sharing your thoughts with us!

Interested in some extra reading? 

European Accessibility Act 

Access Denied: The (in)accessibility of European Political Party websites

Easy English versus Plain English guide