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Facilita: reading assistance for low-literacy readers

Published: 05 October 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Texts are the media content primarily available on Web sites and applications. However, this heavy use of texts creates an accessibility barrier to those who cannot read fluently in their mother tongue due to both text length and linguistic complexity. To offer an accessible alternative to these readers, shorter and simplified versions of text content should be provided. Taking that into consideration, this paper introduces Facilita, an assistive technology to help lower-literacy users to understand the text content of Web applications. Facilita generates an accessible content from Web pages automatically, using summarization and simplification techniques. It is also important to consider interface design requirements, since Facilita's target audience (the functionally illiterate) is often classified as computer illiterate as well. Thus, interaction and user interface design were developed considering the limitations and skills of the functionally illiterate.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGDOC '09: Proceedings of the 27th ACM international conference on Design of communication
October 2009
328 pages
ISBN:9781605585598
DOI:10.1145/1621995
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 05 October 2009

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Author Tags

  1. summarization
  2. textual simplification
  3. usability
  4. user centered design
  5. web accessibility

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  • (2024)Bridging the Literacy Gap for Adults: Streaming and Engaging in Adult Literacy Education through LivestreamingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642423(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Syntax-guided controllable sentence simplificationNeurocomputing10.1016/j.neucom.2024.127675587:COnline publication date: 28-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Deep learning approaches to lexical simplification: A surveyJournal of Intelligent Information Systems10.1007/s10844-024-00882-9Online publication date: 2-Sep-2024
  • (2023)Controllable Text Simplification Using Lexically Constrained Decoding Based on Edit Operation Prediction編集操作予測に基づく語彙制約付きデコーディングによるテキスト平易化の難易度制御Journal of Natural Language Processing10.5715/jnlp.30.99130:3(991-1010)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)Reading bots: The implication of deep learning on guided readingFrontiers in Psychology10.3389/fpsyg.2023.98052314Online publication date: 6-Feb-2023
  • (2023)Patterns of reading assistance for software users with varying reading skillsProceedings of the 28th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs10.1145/3628034.3628068(1-12)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Accessible Text Tools for People with Cognitive Impairments and Non-Native Readers: Challenges and OpportunitiesProceedings of Mensch und Computer 202310.1145/3603555.3603569(250-266)Online publication date: 3-Sep-2023
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  • (2023)MyOracle: A Question-Answering application to improve access to information for low-literacy users2023 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON54358.2023.10125207(1-10)Online publication date: 1-May-2023
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