Abstract
The Easy-to-Read (E2R) Methodology was created to improve the daily life of people with cognitive disabilities. This methodology aims to present clear and easily understood documents. The E2R Methodology includes, among others, a set of guidelines related to the writing of texts. Some of these guidelines focus on morphological features that may cause difficulties in reading comprehension. Examples of those guidelines are: (a) to avoid the use of adverbs ending in -mente (-ly in English), and (b) to avoid the use of superlative forms. Both linguistic structures are quite long, which is also related to another E2R guideline (“The use of long words should be avoided”). Currently, E2R guidelines are applied manually to create easy-to-read text materials. To help in such a manual process, our research line is focused on applying the E2R Methodology in Spanish texts in a (semi)-automatic fashion. Specifically, in this paper we present (a) the inclusive design approach for the development of E2R adaptation methods for avoiding adverbs ending in -mente and superlative forms, (b) the initial methods for adapting those morphological features to an E2R version, and (c) a preliminary user-based evaluation of the implementation of those methods.
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Notes
- 1.
We are investigating both the symbolic and subsymbolic approaches in AI.
- 2.
Human knowledge is explicitly represented in a declarative form (e.g. facts and rules). This way to proceed is part of the so-called symbolic AI.
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Translation: Voters went massively to the polls.
- 4.
Translation: deliberately, negligently, (un)consciously.
- 5.
Translation: He sliced the cake deeply.
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Translation: arduously, difficultly, painfully, easily.
- 7.
Both suffixes express the same superlative feature. However, superlatives ending in -ísimo/a are widespread used in comparison to those in -érrimo/a. The suffixes -ísimo and -érrimo refer to the masculine gender, while -ísima and -érrima to the feminine gender. (Henceforth, we will use the slash symbol (/) to include both genders).
- 8.
In the colloquial register it is common to use the suffix -ísimo/a in elative adjectives to focus on the meaning of the adjective, so we can find this type of structures in spoken language, even though they are non-normative. (Henceforth, the asterisk symbol (*) will be used to indicate ungrammatical or non-normative structures).
- 9.
Linguistic term for a word with stress on the antepenultimate (third last) syllable such as the words in English cinema and operational.
- 10.
The main actors who affect and/or are affected by our research line on cognitive accessibility are people with cognitive disabilities and E2R experts.
- 11.
Questionnaires are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8018593.
- 12.
Plena Inclusion España, an associative movement who fights in Spain for the rights of people with intellectual or development disabilities and their families, played the key role of (a) finding federations willing to participate in the user study and (b) distributing the information about this research work through those federations.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
Autonomic Federations from Andalucía, Comunidad Valenciana and Madrid played the crucial role of distributing the goal of this user study as well as the link to the questionnaire through different organisations of people with cognitive disabilities.
- 18.
The level of comprehension is based on a self-assessment question.
- 19.
4.3% of the participants declined to provide their level, while 2.9% did not know it.
- 20.
1.7% of the participants declined to provide their level, while 0.8% did not know about their level and 2.5% did not know how to read.
- 21.
- 22.
The analysis and aggregation of ratings was performed manually grouping the different percentages of response types (no statistical analysis tool was used). Data gathered from the questionnaires are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8018593.
- 23.
Translation: Antonio writes correctly, without spelling mistakes.
- 24.
Translation: Antonio writes in a correct way, without spelling mistakes.
- 25.
Translation: The painters will probably need more paint cans.
- 26.
Translation: Painters may need more cans of paint.
- 27.
Translation: María attends Spanish classes only one day a week.
- 28.
Translation: María attends Spanish classes one day a week.
- 29.
Translation: Formerly, children entered school at the age of 6.
- 30.
Translation: Earlier, children entered school at the age of 6.
- 31.
The regions of Galicia and Cataluña have not been considered as there is only one participant for each.
- 32.
Translation: Alba’s father-in-law is very happy.
- 33.
Translation: Alba’s father-in-law is happy.
- 34.
Translation: Ana is gorgeous.
- 35.
Translation: Ana is very pretty.
- 36.
The regions of Galicia, Cataluña, Castilla y León, and Extremadura have not been considered as there is only one participant for each.
- 37.
Services are not currently available due to privacy constrains in the context of the project in which they has been developed.
- 38.
- 39.
- 40.
- 41.
- 42.
- 43.
- 44.
Questionnaires are written in Spanish, implemented as a Google Form, and available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8018593.
- 45.
Data gathered from the questionnaires as well as reports generated by Google Forms are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8018593.
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Acknowledgments
This research has been financed by Asociación Inserta Innovación (part of Grupo Social Once) through Prosvasi Ciencia y Tecnología Para La Inclusión, A.I.E., within the project ACCESSJOBS. We would like to thank Plena Inclusión España for its help in organising the study with users, as well as the Federations of Organisations of People with Intellectual or Developmental Disabilities in Madrid, Comunidad Valenciana, and Andalucía for their participation in the study. We would like to thank Isa Cano and María José Sánchez for their help in organising the user-based validation of our services. In addition, we really appreciate the collaboration provided by (a) ACCEDES (Entornos y Servicios Accesibles SL.) and its cognitive accessibility validation team, made up of people with intellectual disabilities, from the “Así Mejor” Program of workshops and activities of the Tres Cantos City Council (Madrid) and (b) the users of the COFOIL “cuarentainueve” of the Association Somos Diferencia (AMP) for their participation in the initial service validation. Finally, we would like to express thanks to Arminda Moreno for her help in the analysis of the data gathered in the user-based evaluation of our services.
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Suárez-Figueroa, M.C., Diab, I., González, Á., Rivero-Espinosa, J. (2023). Towards an Automatic Easy-to-Read Adaptation of Morphological Features in Spanish Texts. In: Abdelnour Nocera, J., Kristín Lárusdóttir, M., Petrie, H., Piccinno, A., Winckler, M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2023. INTERACT 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14142. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42280-5_12
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