Sandra Fisher-Martins: The Right to Understand

Medical, legal, and financial documents should be easy to read, but too often they aren’t. With spot-on (and funny) examples, Sandra Fisher Martins shows how overly complex language separates us from the information we need and three steps to change that. This TEDx talk is in Portuguese with English sub-titles.

ABOUT Tedx

TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, ‘ideas worth spreading’. The programme is designed to give communities, organisations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

ABOUT Sandra Fisher-Martins

“Sandra Fisher Martins fights ‘information apartheid’, the barrier created by overly complex language. She helps Portuguese businesses and government agencies introduce clarity to their communications.

Sandra worked as a technical translator for IBM and as a psychologist for the NHS in the UK. In 2007, she set up Português Claro, a training and consultancy firm that introduced plain language to Portugal and has been helping Portuguese companies and government agencies communicate clearly.

After seeing a Plain English campaign in England, she was inspired to establish ‘Portugues Claro’, a consulting and training firm that works to ensure that people are not disenfranchised by what she calls an “information apartheid” that keeps the majority of her fellow Portuguese from fully understanding documents they need for their daily lives.

In 2010, she was commissioned by the government to produce plain-language summaries of all new decree-laws published in the Official Gazette. Sandra is working to develop Euro-clear, a European diploma in clear communication.

The VIDEO