Rachel Aires

Automatic summarization for text simplification: evaluating text understanding by poor readers

In this paper we present experiments on summarization and text simplification for poor readers, more specifically, functional illiteracy readers. We test several summarizers and use summaries as the basis of simplification strategies. We show that each simplification approach has different effects on readers of varied levels of literacy, but that all of them do improve text understanding at some level.

An initial proposal for cooperative evaluation on information retrieval in Portuguese

In this paper we discuss evaluation of information retrieval, Web search and question answering systems, paving the way for the organization of an evaluation contest on IR for Portuguese. Inspired by current international setups, we motivate the need to study the specific problems posed by Portuguese, suggesting a collection suitable for multiple tasks.