Literature Reviews

Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.

• Automatic Text Simplification Tools for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Adults: Benefits of Lexical Simplification and Providing Users with Autonomy

  Oliver Alonzo, Matthew Seita, Abraham Glasser, Matt Huenerfauth (2020) — Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20)

  This CHI 2020 paper is the first empirical study of lexical Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) adult readers, and introduces user autonomy as a central design variable in accessibility ATS tools. Prior ATS researc…

  • automatic text simplification
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • lexical simplification
  • user autonomy
  • reading accessibility
  • readability
  • user experience
  • qualitative research

• Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Complexity of Simplified Texts among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Adults at Different Literacy Levels

  Oliver Alonzo, Jessica Trussell, Becca Dingman, Matt Huenerfauth (2021) — Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '21)

  This CHI 2021 paper is the companion methodological study to Alonzo et al.'s 2022 fluency work: where that later paper asked how to evaluate the fluency (grammaticality) of simplified texts, this one asks how to evaluate their complexity (whether the…

  • automatic text simplification
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • readability
  • reading accessibility
  • research methodology
  • literacy
  • natural language processing
  • qualitative research

• Methods for Evaluating the Fluency of Automatically Simplified Texts with Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Adults at Various Literacy Levels

  Oliver Alonzo, Jessica Trussell, Matthew Watkins, Sooyeon Lee, Matt Huenerfauth (2022) — Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '22)

  This CHI 2022 paper is a methodological study, not a product evaluation: the authors ask how researchers should measure the fluency of Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) output when the evaluators are Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) adults spanning a…

  • automatic text simplification
  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • readability
  • reading accessibility
  • natural language processing
  • research methodology
  • literacy
  • qualitative research

• Making It Simplext: Implementation and Evaluation of a Text Simplification System for Spanish

  Horacio Saggion, Sanja Štajner, Stefan Bott, Simon Mille, Luz Rello, Biljana Drndarevic (2015) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This paper presents Simplext, the first comprehensive automatic text simplification (ATS) system for Spanish. The research addresses a fundamental accessibility barrier: textual content written in complex language excludes people with cognitive disab…

  • text simplification
  • natural language processing
  • cognitive accessibility
  • readability
  • Spanish
  • intellectual disability
  • Down syndrome
  • automatic text simplification

• Reading-Assistance Tools Among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Computing Professionals in the U.S.: Their Reading Experiences, Interests and Perceptions of Social Accessibility

  Oliver Alonzo, Lisa Elliot, Becca Dingman, Sooyeon Lee, Akhter Al Amin, Matt Huenerfauth (2022) — ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing

  This research investigates the reading experiences, needs, and interests of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) computing professionals in Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) tools—software that automatically rewrites complex text to make it easier to rea…

  • deaf
  • hard of hearing
  • DHH
  • automatic text simplification
  • reading assistance
  • social accessibility
  • natural language processing
  • workplace accessibility

• Reading Experiences and Interest in Reading-Assistance Tools Among Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Computing Professionals

  Oliver Alonzo, Lisa Elliot, Becca Dingman, Matt Huenerfauth (2020) — Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2020)

  This study investigates whether Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) computing professionals are interested in Automatic Text Simplification (ATS) tools to assist with reading in their professional work. ATS software rewrites text to improve readability us…

  • deaf and hard of hearing
  • automatic text simplification
  • reading accessibility
  • natural language processing
  • assistive technology
  • workplace accessibility
  • plain language