The Listen Include Respect Guidelines are now in Arabic!
The Listen Include Respect guidelines help organisations understand what they need to do to make sure people with intellectual disabilities are included in their work.
Over 1,500 people with intellectual disabilities and their families from almost 100 countries helped write them.
Launching Listen Include Respect in Arabic is important because it will help organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) understand how to include people with intellectual disabilities.
Listen Include Respect has already helped other organizations around the world be more inclusive, and by translating it into Arabic, organizations in a new region will get good information about how to improve their inclusion practices.
How we created the Arabic translation
We worked with a group of Arabic-speaking self-advocates to make sure that the Arabic version of the Listen Include Respect Guidelines is still easy to understand.
This is important because sometimes when things are translated, it stops being easy.
They reviewed and approved the translation to ensure it’s simple and clear for everyone.
The self-advocates were paid for their work.
By involving self-advocates, we made sure that the Guidelines are accessible and usable for the people who speak Arabic.
Why is it important to have an Arabic version now?
Around the world, people are talking about disability inclusion right now because of the Global Disability Summit.
The Government of Jordan is co-hosting the Global Disability Summit, and many of the conference documents are in Arabic.
Having the Listen Include Respect Guidelines in Arabic will help organisations from the MENA region learn more about Listen Include Respect and how it can be used to support people with intellectual disabilities. We want governments in the region to be thinking about it too while they plan their commitments.
Inclusion International is also hosting our next World Congress in the MENA region, in the United Arab Emirates. We’re using Listen Include Respect to make sure that everything at the World Congress is accessible and inclusive, using easy language and communication. With the Arabic version of the Listen Include Respect Guidelines, our Arabic-speaking participants will be able to fully take part in the big conversations about the guidelines happening at the event.
This work to translate Listen Include Respect into Arabic was funded by the Higher Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (HCD) in Jordan.