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• A Review of 25 Years of Human-Computer Interaction Research on Reading Support Technologies for People with Disabilities Published in the ACM Digital Library

  Oliver Alonzo, Saad Hassan · 2025 · ASSETS 2025: 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This systematic literature review analyzes 101 HCI publications from ACM venues spanning 2000 to 2024 that focus on reading support technologies for people with disabilities. The authors developed a comprehensive coding rubric covering publication metadata, contribution types,…

  systematic literature review · reading support · reading disability · dyslexia · blind or low vision

• Design and Evaluation of an Automatic Text Simplification Prototype with Deaf and Hard-of-hearing Readers

  Oliver Alonzo, Sooyeon Lee, Akhter Al Amin, Mounica Maddela, Wei Xu, Matt Huenerfauth · 2024 · ASSETS '24: Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility

  This paper investigates the design preferences and interactions of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) readers with automatic text simplification (ATS) tools. Many DHH individuals who use sign language as their primary language experience English as a second language with different…

  deaf and hard of hearing · text simplification · reading accessibility · natural language processing · lexical simplification

• Able to Read My Mail: An Accessible e-Mail Client with Assistive Technology

  Horacio Saggion, Daniel Ferrés, Leen Sevens, Ineke Schuurman, Marta Ripollés, Olga Rodríguez · 2017 · Proceedings of the 14th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents Kolumba, an accessible web-based email client developed as part of the EU-funded Able to Include project, specifically designed for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD). The tool addresses a critical gap in workplace digital inclusion:…

  intellectual disability · cognitive accessibility · text simplification · pictograph communication · workplace accessibility

• A plug-in to aid online reading in Spanish

  Luz Rello, Roberto Carlini, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2015 · Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents CASSA, a free Chrome browser plug-in designed to help people read Spanish text on the web by providing simpler synonyms and definitions on demand for complex words. The tool builds on the CASSA (Context Aware Synonym Simplification Algorithm) resource, which…

  text simplification · lexical simplification · dyslexia · cognitive accessibility · readability

• Measuring Text Simplification with the Crowd

  Walter S. Lasecki, Luz Rello, Jeffrey P. Bigham · 2015 · Proceedings of the 12th International Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper investigates whether non-expert crowd workers can reliably evaluate the simplicity of English text, addressing a key gap in text simplification research. Text simplification — reducing the lexical and syntactic complexity of sentences while preserving meaning — is…

  text simplification · crowdsourcing · natural language processing · readability · cognitive accessibility

• Accessible Texts for Autism: An Eye-Tracking Study

  Victoria Yaneva, Irina Temnikova, Ruslan Mitkov · 2015 · ASSETS '15: Proceedings of the 17th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers & Accessibility

  This pioneering study is the first to use eye-tracking technology with autistic participants to evaluate text document accessibility. People with Autism Spectrum Disorder experience difficulties with reading comprehension—including processing complex sentences, understanding…

  autism · ASD · eye tracking · reading comprehension · easy-read

• 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 disabilities, low literacy, and…

  text simplification · natural language processing · cognitive accessibility · readability · Spanish

• Evaluation of DysWebxia: A Reading App Designed for People with Dyslexia

  Luz Rello, Ricardo Baeza-Yates · 2014 · Proceedings of the 11th Web for All Conference (W4A)

  This paper presents the evaluation of DysWebxia, an iOS reading application specifically designed for people with dyslexia. The app integrates evidence-based text presentation features known to improve reading performance for people with dyslexia — including customizable font…

  dyslexia · reading accessibility · text simplification · lexical simplification · mobile accessibility

• Simplify or Help? Text Simplification Strategies for People with Dyslexia

  Luz Rello, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Stefan Bott, Horacio Saggion · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper evaluates two automatic lexical simplification strategies designed to make text more accessible for people with dyslexia. The research addresses a key gap: while previous tools for dyslexic readers focused on text presentation (fonts, spacing, colors), none had…

  dyslexia · text simplification · readability · cognitive accessibility · eye tracking

• DysWebxia 2.0! More Accessible Text for People with Dyslexia

  Luz Rello, Clara Bayarri, Azuki Gòrriz, Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Saurabh Gupta, Gaurang Kanvinde, Horacio Saggion, Stefan Bott, Roberto Carlini, Vasile Topac · 2013 · Proceedings of the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This demo paper introduces DysWebxia 2.0, a model for making text more accessible to people with dyslexia by modifying both the presentation and content of text. The project is notable for being the first model to combine text presentation changes (font, spacing, layout) with…

  dyslexia · text simplification · readability · assistive technology · text presentation

• Multimodal Summarization of Complex Sentences

  Naushad UzZaman, Jeffrey P. Bigham, James F. Allen · 2011 · Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (IUI 2011)

  This paper introduces the concept of multimodal summarization (MMS) for complex sentences — automatically generating diagrams that combine pictures, simplified compressed text, and structural layout to help people understand difficult text. The system, ROC-MMS, targets people…

  cognitive accessibility · reading accessibility · natural language processing · augmentative and alternative communication · text simplification

• Facilita: reading assistance to the functionally illiterate

  Willian Massami Watanabe · 2010 · Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This doctoral consortium paper presents Facilita, a web application that uses natural language processing (NLP) to automatically simplify Portuguese web content for functionally illiterate users. In Brazil, 21.7% of the population aged 15 and over is classified as functionally…

  literacy · cognitive accessibility · natural language processing · text simplification · readability

• Adapting web content for low-literacy readers by using lexical elaboration and named entities labeling

  Willian M. Watanabe, Arnaldo Candido, Marcelo A. Amâncio, Matheus de Oliveira, Thiago A. S. Pardo, Renata P. M. Fortes, Sandra M. Aluísio · 2010 · Proceedings of the 2010 International Cross Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A)

  This paper presents Educational FACILITA, a browser-based tool that uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to automatically adapt web content for low-literacy readers. Developed at the University of São Paulo as part of the PorSimples text simplification project for Brazilian…

  low literacy · natural language processing · text simplification · lexical elaboration · named entity recognition

• A Comparison of Features for Automatic Readability Assessment

  Lijun Feng, Martin Jansche, Matt Huenerfauth, Noémie Elhadad · 2010 · Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computational Linguistics (COLING '10), Posters

  Feng et al. (2010) is a computational-linguistics paper that compares a wide variety of text features for automatically predicting the grade level of reading material aimed at primary-school students. The motivation is both intrinsic — traditional readability formulas such as…

  readability · automatic readability assessment · text simplification · plain language · cognitive accessibility

• Comparing Evaluation Techniques for Text Readability Software for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities

  Matt Huenerfauth, Lijun Feng, Noémie Elhadad · 2009 · Proceedings of the 11th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '09)

  This paper investigates how to properly evaluate text simplification software designed for adults with mild intellectual disabilities (ID). The authors are developing a system that automatically simplifies news articles, displays them, and reads them aloud using text-to-speech —…

  intellectual disability · text simplification · readability · natural language processing · evaluation methodology

• Cognitively Motivated Features for Readability Assessment

  Lijun Feng, Noémie Elhadad, Matt Huenerfauth · 2009 · Proceedings of the 12th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL 2009)

  Feng, Elhadad, and Huenerfauth (2009) develop and evaluate an automatic readability-assessment tool targeted specifically at adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) — people in the 'mild' category (IQ 55-70), who comprise roughly 3% of the U.S. population. Rather than reusing…

  readability · automatic readability assessment · cognitive accessibility · intellectual disability · mild intellectual disability

• Helping Aphasic People Process Online Information

  Siobhan Devlin, Gary Unthank · 2006 · Proceedings of the 8th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (Assets '06)

  This short paper from the University of Sunderland describes the HAPPI (Helping Aphasic People Process Information) project, a web-based text simplification system designed to help people with aphasia access online content such as news stories. Aphasia is a language disorder…

  aphasia · text simplification · cognitive accessibility · lexical simplification · natural language processing

17 results.