Simplify or Help? Text simplification strategies for people with dyslexia

TitleSimplify or Help? Text simplification strategies for people with dyslexia
Publication TypeConference Proceedings
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsRello, Luz, Baeza-Yates, Ricardo, Bott, Stefan, and Saggion, Horacio
Conference NameProceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on web accessibility
Keywordsdyslexia, mobile technology, usability
Abstract

We present a user study for two different automatic strate­ gies that simplify text content for people with dyslexia. The strategies considered are the standard one (replacing a com­ plex word with the most simpler synonym) and a new one that presents several synonyms for a complex word if the user requests them. We compare texts transformed by both strategies with the original text and to a gold standard man­ ually built. The study was undertook by 96 participants, 47 with dyslexia plus a control group of 49 people without dyslexia. To show device independence, for the new strategy we used three different reading devices. Overall, participants with dyslexia found texts presented with the new strategy significantly more readable and comprehensible. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest user study of its kind.

Notes

This article proposed a new text simplication strategy for people with dyslexia. This strategy would replace the difficult word with several similar-meaning words as compared with another method only using one simliar replacement word. And the results indicated that readers generally score higher with the new stretegy in terms of readability, comprehension and easiness with the tool. Therefore, such an approach could be used for furture development of reading softwares/platforms for people with reading disabilities.