Accessibility Ally

00:00
So I want to welcome Erin Casey and Catherine Buckey to today's podcast, both of whom are subject matter experts in plain language. And if I could invite both of you or each of you to introduce yourself, who you are and why this is an area of work that you are engaged with. All right. Hi, Corey. It's nice to be back for my second time on the pod.

00:26
um I'm Erin Casey. am, I reluctantly sometimes describe myself as a subject matter expert on plain language and clear communication. Corey, you and I work together quite a bit. So I'm a late middle-aged woman of European background and I live here in Halifax and I have two young adult kids um and all three of us identify as neurodivergent. So that definitely informs, you know.

00:55
my practice and how I think about plain language and accessibility. uh And I actually have been thinking and talking about and working in plain language for, I was thinking about it this morning, 30 years. So it started out for me in the mid-90s when I was working for a nonprofit women's organization and we were creating uh health resources in plain language and more with the lens of literacy because at the time, literacy was a big

01:25
that people were talking about a lot. And as we know, the things people talk about kind of come and go. um And so we were looking at it through that lens. so plain language was a bit of a big thing, and then it disappeared for a while. And now it's resurfaced um in the accessibility bucket, and I love that. I think it's an even better bucket, and we can just include everything in that. ah you know, for me, the key, I think, is understanding that we can't and don't know.

01:55
who needs plain language, but everybody can benefit from it. Great, thanks so much, Erin. Catherine, over to you. Yeah, my name is Catherine Buckey. uh I've been in the field of plain language pretty much as long as Erin has. ah I came to it actually before I came into plain language. I was a journalist. And at my very first journalism interview out of university, I was told, you write really cleanly.

02:24
That's what it was called at the time. It was clean. It was unembellished. um I had to give up that career when I moved here to Nova Scotia with a baby from Montreal. And I met a person who was the plain language coordinator with the government of Nova Scotia. Just happenstance went to my church. And uh she explained what she did because I had never heard of plain language. And I said, that sounds like how I write.

02:52
And so we got together, I did a couple of contracts, and then I've continued ever since. um It's important to me because for me it has always been an accessibility issue, perhaps not solely focused on people with disabilities, but focused on accessibility for everyone, whether they have low literacy, whether uh they're just new to the country and speak a different language.

03:22
um and whether they face certain barriers um due to something physical, something neurological, educational, for any reason. But my mantra has always been that if there is information that people need to get along in life, they have a right to it and they have a right to understand it without jumping through hoops and requesting something special.

03:49
Yeah, thanks so much, Catherine. I really appreciate even hearing your story of how you came upon it but didn't even know what it was called. And so that's such a great segue to our next question, which is we're talking about plain language and how do we define that? ah Erin, do you want to start off? So I always kind of laugh to myself because a lot of the plain language definitions, even from the plain language sort of groups around the world, are not very plain language.

04:19
So I always say a document or it's also how we speak, right? But the language is clear enough and simple enough for everyone to understand it. And that includes not just the words that we choose and the way we use them, but how they're laid out, how they look on a page or on a screen. What did I miss anything, Catherine? Yeah, more than on a page and on a screen. ah It encompasses all formats.

04:48
of communication. So yes, we're used to pages and screens, ah but I have been working a lot with the Information and Communication Standard Development Committee with the Accessible, the Nova Scotia Accessibility Directorate. And I'm learning that ah language is by feel. It's ah because of the deafblind community. um And it's by touch in Braille. It's...

05:17
So that's a kind of page, but a different page. And it's also, and I took a literacy uh degree at the Mount, and it's also in things like road signs and billboards and labels. And so it encompasses just about any format of communication that you can think of, including discussions, uh important discussions, like between a physician and a patient.

05:47
um So I would say that it goes beyond that. And I think format is something that is left out of even the international plain language definition. um But format should be added because it's really important that people, I know a person who doesn't access things very well on a screen and needs hard copy. um So format is important as well as wording, structure and design, which is what we always talk about.

06:16
Thank you both for that. think that helps to clarify all the ways that we encounter language in our everyday, in our lives, from, as you said, billboard signs, text, and paper and digital documents, for example. um Catherine, why, you mentioned a little bit about this in your intro, but why is plain language so important? It's important because...

06:44
It does a number of things for people and organizations. One of the things it does is it builds trust and uh confidence in an organization. People used to blame themselves for not understanding something. They would say, I don't have enough education or I'm not a lawyer. I can't understand that. Or I'm not an accountant. I can't understand that. They don't do that anymore. Now they question the organization and they say, what are you hiding from me?

07:13
Why are you writing in this convoluted way? You're making it so I don't understand. So it builds trust and confidence in an organization. But more importantly, as I said, everyone has a right to the information that they need to get on in life, whether it's their financial information, their health information, just information about something that will make their life better, like there's going to be a concert in the park. um

07:43
Everyone has a right to that information. So you should be targeting your information to those people who might struggle, who might face barriers to it, so that everyone is on a level playing field, regardless of whatever is going on in their life. And I say that because we all have some kind of deficiency at some point in our life.

08:13
And it's episodic, right? We could be under stress because somebody in the family is very ill or we're ill. We could be like I was when I went to the International Plain Language Conference. We could be jet lagged. um We can uh be under stress from work. And all of those things impact our ability to understand. So, I mean, there's a joke that they don't call it an executive summary for nothing. oh

08:42
That's right. I love that you brought up stress um and pressure and anxiety because we're absolutely living in a time where a lot of people feel certainly economic stress, social stress. And it's an underappreciated reason why people need accessibility because we all know, we all experience this at least some of the time. And unfortunately, some of us all the time, that feeling of like,

09:09
It's too much, it's overwhelming, the cognitive load. And so when information is easily found, easily understood, easily used, more people are gonna get what they need and it's gonna be a positive feedback loop, You know, where people get what they need and that is gonna reduce stress and anxiety. And it's been an interesting thing to think about for me in the last year or two as I do workshops, because a lot of people talk about that. And that didn't used to be the case, that people talked about plain language as important to reduce.

09:39
that pressure and that strain. I'm glad you mentioned cognitive load because there ah is a bit of a divide on reducing cognitive load. There are people who say, well, if we do that, that's part of the dumbing down kind of thing. ah And if we make it too easy for people, we won't learn. And to me, it's like there's a time for learning and there's a time for actually getting stuff quickly.

10:07
Like one of the things I think you've probably, don't know, but you may have said this about plain language is, you know, we want people to understand what they read the first time, not go back. ah There's a time for that though. There's literature, there's poetry, there's art, there's all kinds of other ways that we can, but there's puzzles. We can build our cognition, but we shouldn't have to work at it when...

10:34
We're trying to understand how to take a medication or we're trying to understand how to file our taxes or how to get a loan or- Apply for a job? Apply for a job. Any of those things, right? Yeah. And in a way it's very, em and we should probably define cognitive load. That's a good idea. But you know, that the notion of just the...

10:59
how hard it can be to think sometimes, right? And we all need to think every day and make many of us a thousand mundane, boring decisions. And it's uh a cognitive load, right? It's a lot on your poor little brain. Taking in information, processing that information and making decisions based on it. We do that over and over and over again. And in a way, it's a very paternalistic attitude to say, oh, well, if we make it too easy, people won't learn anything, right?

11:29
this idea that somehow some of us are on the top of the pile deciding who needs what we have, the information that we have, deciding that they somehow have to work for that. Yeah, yeah. And I actually encountered that once in a meeting. um I was in a budgetary meeting with the government, and we were talking about how to communicate budget information to the public.

11:55
And it was a massive meeting, so I'm not calling anybody out. ah But one gentleman stood up and said, look, if people want to understand the budget, they need to get some financial education. Wow. Ouch. And I think this leads very well into our next question around what is some of the resistance you've encountered? I know both of you do a lot of.

12:20
um educating and training and um sharing information around plain language. Where do you encounter resistance? What comes up? So, Catherine already used the term dumbing down. So I think you probably agree with me that is the number one objection that comes out of people's mouths often is, well, if we dumb this down, then all manner of terrible things may happen. I don't know. I mean,

12:48
Sometimes I feel like saying, what's so wrong with them? What's so wrong with dumbing it down? Like, what's the big deal? know? People need to know how to get a job, how to access benefits, how to do whatever it is they need to do. Why does that need to be a challenge or a test of some kind? um So I think that's some of the resistance. But the other piece of resistance that I run into a lot, because I do training with public sector folks and public sector adjacent,

13:18
is kind of an internal objection, which is, oh my gosh, if I start writing and speaking this way, people are gonna think I don't know what I'm talking about, or I don't have the expertise, or I don't have the skills, and it's gonna make the wrong impression. And we are socialized that way from the minute we step into school, which is the more words you use, the smarter you sound, and use big words, use, and listen, I love words.

13:46
Yeah, as Corey would know, I'll use a big word all day long, but only in the right context. And so I think we're socialized from when we're very young children that to demonstrate our knowledge and our expertise and our worth, we have to speak and write in a certain way. And it's really, takes time to undo that, to unravel that for people and help them understand that like, it shows leadership to speak clearly and plainly and answer questions and be open to um

14:16
people saying, hey, I didn't understand that. So I think for me, that's a really important piece is just helping folks overcome that sense of dread that somehow they're going to be damaged or their career is gonna be damaged if they start doing this. I like that you brought up just the verb unlearning, because I feel like that's what I've had to do in the last sort of 10 years or so is I was socialized by a post-secondary education that again, rewards

14:46
ah maybe unclear language and rewards, as you said, using big words ah and complex language. And so I've had to unlearn how to do that. And as I do that, I actually get like more and more people respond to say, oh, like thank you for sharing that in such a like, you know, a simple, straightforward way. So um yeah, Catherine, are there other areas of resistance that you?

15:15
encounter as you do this work? Yeah, there is one aspect of plain language that we didn't touch on yet, which is audience engagement. A document or any communication is not in plain language until the people it's aimed at say it is. I can't go off and use all the kind of rules and guidelines that we have in place for plain language and say, hey, look, this is in plain language. Because as soon as I hand it,

15:45
to you or Erin and they go, well, I don't understand this. Boom, it's not in plain language, is it? And so the uh resistance that I come up against now, more than the sort of dumbing down thing, is well, we don't have the time or the budget to engage that audience. um And unfortunately, whole programs can be shelved because the communication wasn't

16:15
They'll say, well, people didn't do this. And it's like, well, did they understand how? Without that engagement, and you can engage the audience at the beginning through finding out what they want. And it doesn't have to be a lot of people. ah You can find out partway through by developing something and then bringing some people in and getting their input on it. You can do it right before publication if you want and have some kind of testing done.

16:45
But if you don't do something with the people you're trying to communicate to, then you don't know. There's no way for you to know whether it's in plain language for them. And that's the true test. That's the resistance I come up against. And I just want to add to that. Like, you're right that there's a resistance to like testing the product. And there are some actually, I even say to people, like if I am talking to people and there's someone who works at a municipality with

17:12
employees, I just say like go down the hall and test it on your your colleague who doesn't know about it, doesn't know about it at the very least like or show it to a few people in the office next door. Like sometimes it's not that hard to check on something and see if it's clear. Exactly. You just need to go to someone who doesn't have the same knowledge that you do. We're not talking about statistical testing here. We're talking about but we have to understand like one of the things is try to test if you can only test

17:42
one person. Try to make that the most vulnerable person in your audience. Somebody who has some barrier that they need to overcome. So you can at least overcome that one barrier. But you can always test. are, we're not Mesopotamians. We don't carve our communications in stone anymore. They're iterative. So testing can be, hey, how many calls for questions did we get on this?

18:11
Where are people having trouble? Oh, maybe we'll fix that piece. So you can test over time as well. Yeah, and making those small changes in a great way. So the accessibility directorate here in Nova Scotia has a first voice roster. And many people don't know about this, but they put a call out and anyone can join at any time. And so if there's a piece of communication, um

18:37
For example, I did some work with the government of Nova Scotia around some ableism resources. And we tested those through the First Voice roster. So those are people with a range of disabilities. And some of the information that came back was so kind of foundational and fundamental that we were like, oh my gosh, how did we not sort of, you know, um how did we not see this in the work that we were doing? But it is through that.

19:07
kind of ongoing continuous improvement. So I like, Catherine, that you pointed out, you you can sort of do it at any time, but it also is that ongoing, those small changes, when you get feedback, making those changes. And the idea that anything we create, I love that you said we're not Mesopotamians, like, I'm gonna steal that, Catherine. Like, that anything we make, like, we can, it's okay. We did it, we can change it, we can, you know.

19:35
Yeah, digital communication in particular. I don't understand the reticence of, you know, we've got to get it up there. I love that um I recently worked on the plain language standard for Canada with Accessibility Standards Canada. And not just for the plain language standard, but for every standard that they have published and are going to publish. They have a report a problem on this page button. uh

20:05
That just warms my heart. And it's got like about four things that you can report on, but it also has other and a box for text. And so that is one way, a pretty easy way that you can gather feedback on stuff. This wasn't clear. This wasn't spelled right. This misses this. There's nothing about this. And when they revisit that in five years or earlier as needed, as they say, uh

20:34
they'll be able to look at that and make changes without having to go to another big public review, let's say. Because they've built the public review in. Exactly. Catherine, so you've been part of developing these standards nationally, but also you're on the information and communications uh standard recommendation committee here in Nova Scotia. Erin, I know you do a lot of training and education in this field. So what are some of the strategies that help

21:02
to shift culture? What are some of those things that um really sort of ignite action in this area? I think there's the persuasive one and there's a cudgel. Okay. um The cudgel is if these standards or when these standards become regulation, people will have no choice. They will have to. I don't think that's the best thing.

21:32
ah because it means people will rush to comply and maybe find like what's the quickest way I can comply. I think what they need to understand is that uh I'll hit on a few points. Plain language saves you time. It saves you money. As I said, it builds trust and confidence in your organization. And we live in a multilingual country. It makes things easier to translate.

22:00
So all of those four things can help your organization move to plain language. You uh need buy-in from the top. You need champions in the organization who are going to do this. But those champions need to learn a few things. If I could tell a couple of anecdotes that I learned from the conference I was at. So there was a speaker who was from Norway, Heidi Eklund. And she talked about

22:29
They actually audited a couple of plain language projects, which I thought was brilliant. So in the municipality of Tunsburg, they wrote and redesigned invoices in plain language for their health care. And what they found out was they had 2.5 fewer phone calls per day, resulting in 550 fewer phone calls annually.

22:56
and that saved about $4,812 Canadian per year. Another municipality changed their housing applications into plain language. They saved more than $1,650 per year. They had to send out 194 fewer letters to people saying they didn't qualify. So they saved that money on writing those letters, having someone do it, sending it out.

23:25
And so that's an annual savings. And what Heidi Eklund said was that imagine now these two municipalities have built a model. Now if they share it, they don't even have the cost of the model anymore. They just need to adopt it. And how much more she estimated that Norway would save, um I can't do the...

23:51
currency conversion, but they would save more than 100,000 corona a year if they just shared. ah So that's persuasive to people who are counting money and saying we can't afford to engage because that engagement pays for itself. Yeah. So save time, save money, more efficient and greater impact because then

24:18
the folks on the receiving end of those applications or those invoices aren't using their time and money. And as you talk about really building trust. I also think, because I talk to employees a lot of municipalities and other public sector bodies, and I think a side effect of all this would be actually increased job satisfaction and morale in the workplace because...

24:44
you're not getting as many of these phone calls and inquiries and people not understanding. And so you have the satisfaction of a job well done, frankly, right? And feeling like what you're trying to do is actually getting done and being accomplished. And I think it has all kinds of interesting possibility for follow on effects in a workplace. Absolutely. I think you get, as people see the results, it's kind of a snowball effect.

25:13
you get more buy-in. So what is when we're kind of speaking to our listeners here, uh employees, workplaces across Nova Scotia, what are some of the pieces of advice? One or two things that you might suggest, hey, you could start with X, or you might want to check out this resource. For example, so one of the things I've realized in the last couple of years is if you can get

25:43
Two or three or more people from the same organization in the room for a training, that's the key. Because they're in there, they're experiencing this together, their eyes are being open to the benefits and the gifts of plain language, and they're excited and they can talk to each other and go back together to their workplace and start changing things. you don't, as we know with all things accessibility, you don't change everything overnight.

26:11
You can pick one thing, you can look at all your signage, for example. um Or you can look at how to pay a parking ticket on your municipality's website, whatever it is. But you can get this little group of champions to go back into the organization and start to shift things. And they have each other. And so it's not just one person starting to write plainer emails. And then their colleagues going, why are you writing like that? So that's been super powerful. And it's been identified back to me as something that's

26:40
worked really well. um And it's not about everyone in the organization having the skill, because not everyone is going to have the skill to do plain language or the aptitude or whatever. But it's not about everybody having that. It's more about building up that culture shift so everybody believes in it and thinks it's a good idea. And there's other ways of doing that. And one of them is just also to create a culture where it's OK to say, I don't know. I don't understand.

27:09
can you please explain that to me? And that can happen in meetings, it can happen in emails. And so when we have a culture where people aren't afraid to put up their hand and say they don't know or don't understand, that also creates the conditions for better communication internally and externally. And that's of course a big part of psychological safety in a workplace being able to say, don't know, or I've made a mistake, or asking questions. And we know there's new legislation both federally and provincially around that as well. So.

27:36
This really ties into so many elements of inclusive, accessible, and safe kind of workplace culture as you're talking about, Erin. Yeah, and at the same time.

27:50
When you say, I don't understand or please explain that to me, you're already practicing plain language, right? um I was working on the snowplow operator's manual. um so the person I was working with would write his emails um very officiously, bureaucratically, but...

28:18
So I would phone him and I'd say, I don't really understand that. And it's easy for me. I'm not a snow plow operator, so was totally safe for me to do that. Can you just explain it to me? And when he explained it, it was super clear. And I'm not sure he realized his own words were then reflected in the manual. But some people get locked into, and I think it is from school, this way of writing. So it is a culture shift within the organization.

28:47
I would say that those people that you need to bring into training, they need to be in leadership positions. It can't be the receptionist. The receptionist is important too though. She is important or he. They are important. But they need to be someone in a leadership position because people who are in an organization and want to move up, want to write like the boss. And if that's not being demonstrated,

29:17
you have a tougher time. I'm not saying it can't happen, but it's more difficult. We certainly need champions at the leadership level and kind of at all levels of an organization. But yeah, I agree. think um when you when you see that happening kind of bottom up, top down, that's where you really know the culture shift is happening. Anything else you would like to share about the importance, the impact of plain language in

29:46
in the work that uh needs to be done and is happening in Nova Scotia. Can I reinforce something Catherine just said? Sure. So you kind of accidentally shared one of the best tools that we have for plain language, which is getting someone just to verbally explain something and then taking that down and writing and using it. Yeah. Because you're absolutely right. you know, part of being part of the club, say, for this snowplow driver, whatever the field is, education or law or

30:15
medicine or whatever is like knowing the vocabulary and it's insider language and it's there's gatekeeping and it's like proving, you know how to talk like the boss and ah so just getting people to explain what they do is or or or verbally give instructions like is it's a nice little shortcut to getting to the plain language that you need.

30:37
One of my favorite things that Erin does, Erin, in your workshops is you ask people to write down their job titles and then to plain language their job titles. And it is fascinating. So for people who have like, you know, policy strategist or whatever that might be, and you ask them to say, but what do you do every day? And it is for me, I've seen this over and over again. is a right, that is a mindset shift. So.

31:05
Even for our listeners. really hard. And also hilarious. exactly. So for our listeners, I want you to take a moment and I want you to think about what your job title is and think about how plain language it is and how much does it reflect actually what you do every day? And how might it be possible to change, make a few tweaks to that to make that really uh understandable to everyone you might encounter in your work? Yeah. Yeah.

31:35
If I may add one more thing, ah I think that again, going all the way back to the beginning on this dumbing down business, ah I would like to say that plain language is raising language up. And we often think of it as outward communication to the general public rather than internal communication. So I like to say that I am not writing to a specific grade level. I am not communicating. ah

32:05
to the vast unknown, I'm communicating with a specific group of people. So what is plain language to a lawyer is not plain language to a plumber. So you really need to know who you're communicating with because jargon is okay sometimes depending on who you're communicating with. It's not always, and it has to be the right kind.

32:36
So I think if people can get into their minds really knowing who they're communicating with and communicating in the language that those people use, that's where it's efficient. Yeah, definitely. And I love that.

32:51
I'm looking at this note I have on my cheat sheet. Don't forget that internal plain language is also key. And it's really true. think sometimes too, we get stuck in, oh, well, we're talking to our constituency, our audience, whoever that might be, which is super important, like obviously first rule of communication, understand your audience. But I think we forget sometimes that we also need to apply those rules internally in our own internal communication. That could be, you know, in our meetings, emails, know, policies, performance reviews, job postings.

33:21
Like it really should be from the inside out and that also helps with the buy-in. It does it does and and knowing that there's no such thing as the general public I mean For instance someone your example of how to pay a parking ticket, right? Well, that's for the general public Is it or is it for people with cars who tend to not pay parking tickets? I always um

33:49
Even when you say internally, so I'm thinking about my own internal team at Sea Change. Yes, I'm putting us on the hot seat. I always like to repeat sort of this idea that we need to assume that. So yes, of course we have a general sense of our audience, but we also have to assume that our audience doesn't know what we know. In order to then be able to like write clearly.

34:19
whether it's, yeah, of course, acronyms, whether it's like, you know, just like cognitive load, cognitive load. That's a huge one. That's title of a resource, by the way. it? Oh, I love it. It's by the Nelson Group. And there's a book called Don't Make Me Think. And it is all about they're actually in the usability.

34:45
Yeah, like user experience, usability. experience, usability. But it's the same if we're communicating in numbers, if we're using acronyms, if we're using initialisms, all of those things. We really need to think about who can understand that. And I'm hearing it a lot in the news lately, idioms in particular. And I'm like, well, if I just moved here from Nigeria, would I know what reg and the puck means?

35:14
I don't know what it means. I've lived here my whole life. You probably have a sense that it's a hockey thing, though. Yes, I probably could get that far. Yeah. And see, I'm not sure I know what it means. And yet, it can be used in a presentation or in a news report or somewhere. you're like, really think about who understands that besides you. That's absolutely true. Yes. Yeah. And I think idioms...

35:42
I'm glad you brought that up because Nova Scotia is an increasingly diverse multicultural place. And we do love our idioms and sayings, you know, and we can't always assume that everybody understands them. Can I give one small example? You're going to love this, Catherine. I use this in workshops a lot. This was a few years ago. I was listening to the radio and I think there was a tropical storm coming. And so they had someone on from emergency services talking about this and what people should be doing.

36:12
And the person being interviewed said that we should all engage in emergency preparedness activities. Oh, OK. And I stopped in my kitchen and I thought, what? And basically, that person just said, get ready. Yeah. Yeah. That's all they said. Yeah. That's all they said. And they didn't describe with those. didn't say how. So I'm going to engage in emergency preparedness activities. So I'm going to lock my doors. Yeah. Yeah.

36:40
and I'm going to hide under the bed. But I just think, but why? Then I think to myself, why is that happening? Why is that person speaking in that way? And if that person were sitting at my kitchen table having a coffee with me, would they ever say that? No, never. I'm sure they would not. But it's just this, I think, a sense often when you're in a bureaucratic position, especially, that you have to sound a certain way to be part of the club.

37:08
And as you were saying, so that's why internal plain language is so important because if we can get rid of that bureaucratic speak, that office speak and speak to each other as humans in the office, that flows out. You're already on your way. Yeah. So I'm taking so much from this conversation. uh As much as I think, oh yeah, I know plain language.

37:35
The idea, Catherine, I was still thinking of it as like maybe a particular reading level, for example. And so you've really shifted my thinking to be about, who's using the information and ensuring that you're gathering that feedback and doing that testing. Yeah, what is relevant to them? What do they need? What do they already know? What do they need to know? What do you want them to do about it? Think about those things. Grade level doesn't...

38:04
doesn't really help you a lot. mean, it can. If in a first iteration, you can go, okay, this is pretty good. But I always use this example. For a few years now, I have been hearing children as young as two or three admonish their parents that that's not appropriate. Now, appropriate's a big word.

38:32
But if a two-year-old knows what it means because they've heard it and they've heard it in context and now they're repeating it back, long words aren't necessarily your problem. That's a great example. Yeah. And I also, I agree with that. It's not about, and I always say also sometimes a plain language version needs more words. Oh, it often needs more words. it needs explanation. And the other adage I have is do not fear the short sentence.

39:01
So we tend to think like a short sentence is, no, no, that's too simple or that's no good. It's like, no, no, short sentences are your friend. You need a mix of sentences. I talk about the number of ideas in a sentence rather than the number of words. try to keep your sentence to one idea. You can't always because we have if, then, and that's two ideas. But try to keep as few ideas in your sentence as possible.

39:28
And I don't talk about short words. I talk about familiar words, words that are familiar to your audience. And that's again, you know, repeat in your communication the language that these people already use. Yeah, I love that. Not about length, not about. Yeah. And and and it is all about understanding your audience familiarity, all of those things. So I want to thank you both. You've brought a

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I think a fresh perspective to the idea of plain and clear language and just appreciate you both uh sharing your thoughts with us today. Thank you. It was so fun. It was so great to meet you, Catherine. It was very nice to meet you, Erin. And thank you. Yeah, great.