No jargon people with LD

Why You Should not use Jargon with People who have Learning Disabilities?

 

One of the most important things you need to do when speaking with People who have Learning Disabilities is to talk to them in a way that they understand. Here is the biggest challenge anyone can have.

 

Every person with a learning Disability is not the same, so that is the very first thing you will need to understand, so the words that you use to help them understand what you may want to talk to them about, is the most important and difficult thing you will need to work on.

 

This is because anyone working with People with Learning disabilities will be working both with them and Councils, National Health Service and other people, who provide them with the help and support they need, this can be daily, weekly or monthly.

 

When you are working with people in these types of places, they will use Jargon all the time, they will use letters instead of the full words, they will use difficult long words because they think it makes them look special, but also it is because they are not thinking of the people they are speaking too.

 

When I was asked to write this, it was because I use too much jargon, I don’t mean too but it is not helpful to the people I work with every day.

 

If I use simple words I may have to say more words, but it will make sure that the people I am talking to will understand what I am saying.

 

Sometimes people like me think that because a word is used a lot people understand what it means, this is also a problem as lots of people with learning disability find it hard to say to people like me, that they don’t understand what I am saying, they may even start using the words I am saying, even if they don’t know what they mean.

 

If we do not use jargon words it means that people are not made to feel different and are made to feel part of all the things that are being talked about, when they are at meetings with others or if they are having meetings on their own with important people, this could mean they would not need someone to support them at meetings and they could go themselves and say what they want and then understand what was being talked about.

 

Jargon is used in all our lives by many different people and it should not be as if more easy words were used on TV, in the newspapers, books and on the internet, they more people including people with learning disabilities would better understand what was being talked about.

 

We all try to talk like people that work in the Law as we think that’s how people want us to speak so we can make us sound important and clever.

 

I looked up the meaning of Jargon to help me and it says that its special words by groups of people to explain things where they work but in a way that most people do not understand, the funny bit is I even have had to remove the jargon from the way in which Jargon is spoken about in a dictionary.