We’re not cool enough to get invited to the Technology, Entertainment and Design
The speaker is
“These are not documents written by experts for experts,” she says. “These are public documents, documents I need to understand to get by daily, to live my life.”
Fisher Martins appropriately holds up the U.S. subprime mortgage debacle as Exhibit A for what happens when people sign documents they don’t understand. And she will brook no lawyerly explanations for impenetrable, convoluted writing (“‘What if it goes to court?’ … I’ve heard them all, they’re all excuses”).
People have a “right to understand,” she says, and the professionals who draft these materials must learn to “write for grandma.”
Even though it’s in Portugese with subtitles, we found the talk as riveting as anything else on the TED site.