A text-writing system for Easy-to-Read G erman evaluated with low-literate users with cognitive impairment (2022)

Abstract: Low-literate users with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) and/or complex communication needs (CCN) require specific writing support. We present a system that interactively supports fast and correct writing of a variant of Leichte Sprache (LS; German term for easy-to-read German), slightly extended within and beyond the inner-sentential syntactic level. The system provides simple and intuitive dialogues for selecting options from a natural-language paraphrase generator. Moreover, it reminds the user to add text elements enhancing understandability, audience design, and text coherence. In earlier development phases, the system was evaluated with different groups of substitute users. Here, we report a case study with seven low-literate users with IDD.

## introduction recent studies report that more than 10 percent of german-speaking adults have low literacy skills (cf. anke @xcite . people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (idd) and/or complex communication needs (ccn) often belong to this group @xcite ; hereafter referred to as the target group, or simply the users). leichte sprache (ls; easy-to-read german), a simplified variety of german, was developed for the target group as part of the plain language movement of the 2000s @xcite @xcite . inclusion necessitates technical assistance to barrier-free participation in all social spheres @xcite . in the following, we investigate the extent to which natural language processing (nlp) can support the users while writing. an increasing variety of writingsupport systems based on natural language generation (nlg) attract attention (for their prospects, see, e.g., dale and viethen, 2021; for approaches based on deep learning, see @xcite . adaptive behavior like automatically modifying the written text incurs the risk that usersdue to low-literacy-do not carefully check whether or not the changes express the intended meaning. missing is a text base produced by the target group. in general, text in ls is produced by authors proficient in standard german 1 . thus, suggestions by the system that are automatically extracted from given ls text might not be perceived as helpful but irritating, let alone unintentionally patronizing. in addition, interactions with the user pose additional challenges, such as designing an accessible interface (cf. @xcite . in essence, supportive interaction patterns should not overtax the user. in the present paper, we describe easytalk for fast, correct and reader-centered writing in extended leichte sprache (els; @xcite ; els extends ls in several respects, for instance, with high frequent constructions from spoken german that incorporate the target group's ways of articulating their thoughts; for previous prototypes of easytalk, see @xcite . on the sentential level, a natural-language paraphrase generator suggests correctly inflected word forms. it pursues the overall correctness and completeness of the sentence and provides the correct german word ordering. in order to improve textunderstandability and text-coherence over the entire text, easytalk reminds the user to add audi-ence-design features within a clause @xcite . the user is invited to clarify the discourse structure by adding connectors (inspired by rhetorical-structure theory (rst); see @xcite @xcite , thus explicitly marking the relationship between the simple clauses. (svo order is mandatory in declarative main clauses of (e)ls). in the following, we first summarize the state of the art in writing-support systems. then, we outline easytalk's mechanisms for supporting textproduction both within and between sentences. in section 4, we report the results of a case study we recently conducted with seven users from the target group. the results are compared with observations from earlier evaluations with other user groups, in particular with l2 learners of german. the paper ends with a discussion of open issues and desirable future work. @xcite . in section 2.2, we outline text-based systems designed for the target group. finally, we address systems for teaching text-writing. ## text-writing assistance by easytalk easytalk targets the creation of text beyond the genre of simple chat messages with an interface that does not overtax the user. in particular, it aims to alleviate the need for a lengthy learning and practicing period. all barrier-free concepts cited previously should be available. to interlace with the user's word-by-word formulation process, we suggest a bottom-up approach employing a natural-language paraphrase generator on the sentential level (cf. section 3.1). to meet the concepts the target group is likely to use to express their thoughts, the generator is based on an extension of ls. as the extension does not deviate from the mandatory svo word order in declarative main clauses, we propose to add discourse-structure clues between sentences (see section 3.2) to improve text coherence. we demonstrate that all dialogues with the user can be restricted to easy wording and simple choices-irrespective of the complexity of the linguistic task. ## evaluation in general, it is best practice to identify and correct usability flaws in software before it is made available to the user (see, e.g., @xcite . for the target group, the first impression is particularly crucial for the acceptance of a system. aac software is often abandoned after a short period of use (see, e.g., @xcite @xcite . maturing versions of easytalk were previously evaluated in several tests with substitute user groups (see, e.g., @xcite such as experts in the field of accessible communication and l2 learners (cefr-level a1-b1 and differing computer skills). nevertheless, it is essential to test the system with the actual target group (cf. @xcite @xcite , for user sensitive, inclusive design of accessible, disability-aware software). here, we compare the previous findings with observations from the recent study. ## conclusions we presented easytalk, an intuitive-to-use writing assistant for fast and correct text writing in els for low-literate users with idd and/or ccn. the evaluation verified the claim that users can instantaneously type complete and correct sentences with easytalk. however, the offer of connectors should be improved. as mentioned above, we plan a make-over of the connector panel combined with an active teaching unit. it is an open question to which extent automatic storytelling concepts (cf. section 2.3) can be incorporated into the active training mode of our system (cf. @xcite . we intend to evaluate this new feature in longitudinal studies with the target user group. besides further above-mentioned future work, personalized features for specific user groups will be realized. moreover, a native smartphone version is under development.