Researchers, journalists, accessibility experts and people with disabilities gathered in Palermo on 8 May for a full-day open conference on easy-to-understand news. The conference brought together four European public broadcasters, a university from Barcelona and a user organization from Palermo along with many other organisation representatives and experts in the field of media accessibility and easy-to-understand news.
The conference, held at the Astoria Palace Hotel and equipped with subtitles and interpretation, opened with a series of expert presentations on the foundations of accessible communication. Roberta Piazza, professor of general pedagogy at the University of Catania, addressed the principles of easy-to-understand language. This was followed by a user testimonial: Fabiana Muscas from Palermo spoke about her experience of finding and understanding news. “On television they talk so fast that you don’t understand anything, and yet the things that happen in the world are important to know,” she said. Muscas described how she turns to Facebook for news, adding: “I would like to be able to read news in easy-to-understand language, because when I read things and don’t understand them, it makes me nervous.” Her account underlines the need for public broadcasters, as pillars of credible journalism, to take the adaptation of news into easy-to-understand language seriously. Roberto Scano, expert at AccessibleEU, presented the accessibility of information in a broader context, followed by project coordinator and accessibility specialist Veronika Rot of RTV Slovenija, who introduced the project to attendees.
The four partner broadcasters — RTV Slovenija, Latvijas Radio, ORF and 3Cat — presented their work and research on producing easy-to-understand news. After the break, Anna Matamala, full professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, presented the project’s research findings and production recommendations. Eleonora Di Liberto, vice president of the Italian organization Uniamoci APS, spoke from the end-user perspective and outlined the steps needed to make current efforts more effective. William Kremer, reporter and producer for the BBC World Service and 2025 fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, raised a central tension in the field: whether full participation of people with learning disabilities in news production and broad accessibility for the widest possible audience can be achieved at the same time. Judith Hermetter, global head of communications at Zero Project, closed the morning sessions with a presentation on innovative solutions for the inclusion of people with disabilities.
In the afternoon, Di Liberto and conference host Antonio Lo Verde, parliament correspondent at the Sicilian Regional Assembly, prepared the group discussions. Participants then split into two groups for open space discussions on questions of target audience, content scope, and the relative merits of separate accessible formats versus a universal design approach.
The day before: partner meeting
The day before the conference, on 7 May, the consortium held a full-day internal partner meeting at Uniamoci headquarters in Palermo. Partners reviewed the status of project work packages and agreed on next steps. The central topic was the development of an online hub for journalists, which will present recommendations and practical examples of easy-to-understand news production. The project’s closing events will take place on 28 September in Ljubljana and 17 November in Vienna.
