Renata Pontin de Mattos Fortes

Towards Brazilian Portuguese automatic text simplification systems

In this paper we investigate the main linguistic phenomena that can make texts complex and how they could be simplified. We focus on a corpus analysis of simple account texts available on the web for Brazilian Portuguese and propose simplification strategies for this language. This study illustrates the need for text simplification to facilitate accessibility to information by poor literacy readers and potentially by people with other cognitive disabilities. It also highlights characteristics of simplification for Portuguese, which may differ from other languages. Such study consists of the first step towards building Brazilian Portuguese text simplification systems. One of the scenarios in which these systems could be used is that of reading electronic texts produced, e.g., by the Brazilian government or by relevant news agencies.

Facilita: reading assistance for low-literacy readers

Texts are the media content primarily available on Web sites and applications. However, this heavy use of texts creates an accessibility barrier to those who cannot read fluently in their mother tongue due to both text length and linguistic complexity. To offer an accessible alternative to these readers, shorter and simplified versions of text content should be provided. Taking that into consideration, this paper introduces Facilita, an assistive technology to help lower-literacy users to understand the text content of Web applications. Facilita generates an accessible content from Web pages automatically, using summarization and simplification techniques. It is also important to consider interface design requirements, since Facilitas target audience (the functionally illiterate) is often classified as computer illiterate as well. Thus, interaction and user interface design were developed considering the limitations and skills of the functionally illiterate.

Techniques for developing more accessible web applications: a survey towards a process classification

The Web has become one of the most important communication media, since it is spread all over the world. In order to enable everyone to access this medium, Web accessibility has become an emerging topic, and many techniques have been evolved to support the development of accessible Web content. This paper presents a survey on techniques for Web accessibility and proposes a classification into the processes of ISO/IEC 12207 standard. The survey was carried out applying systematic review principles during the literature review. The results include analysis obtained from the synthesis of 53 studies, selected from an initial set of 844. Although the survey results indicate a growth in research on techniques for design and evaluation of Web applications, they also indicate that several development activities have been poorly addressed by scientific research efforts.

An evaluation of web accessibility metrics based on their attributes

Accessibility is a concept related to providing access to Web content to people with different abilities and people using different devices. A number of metrics have been proposed in the last years to help to obtain quantitative Web accessibility levels. Each Web development project has different aspects, and the choice of a given Web accessibility metric should be carefully considered according to the needs of the project. In this paper, we present a review on the main existing Web accessibility metrics, emphasizing the main features and comparing their correlations from experimental data obtained from large scale evaluations. Project managers and evaluators should consider specific features for each given project to effectively choose a proper metric. Needs to adjust customized coefficients or to adhere to automatic evaluation tools are important issues to be observed.

MOOGLE: A Model Search Engine

Models are becoming increasingly important in the software process. As a consequence, the number of models being used is increasing, and so is the need for efficient mechanisms to search them. Various existing search engines could be used for this purpose, but they lack features to properly search models, mainly because they are strongly focused on text-based search. This paper presents Moogle, a model search engine that uses metamodeling information to create richer search indexes and to allow more complex queries to be performed. The paper also presents the results of an evaluation of Moogle, which showed that the metamodel information improves the accuracy of the search.

A survey on the accessibility awareness of people involved in web development projects in Brazil

Accessibility has become a very important issue to promote inclusion in the Information Society, and people involved in Web development projects have a very important role to contribute with the development of a more inclusive Web. In this paper, we propose an investigation on the accessibility awareness of people involved in Web development in Brazil. We have conducted the research by means of an exploratory survey with a Web based questionnaire and a sample with subjects from academy, industry and government. The study had 613 valid answers and involved representatives from all of the 27 states of Brazil. The results show that accessibility is still far from being actually considered in Web development projects in Brazil, as only 19.9% of the participants have stated that accessibility is considered in their projects. The lack of education on accessibility, as well as the poor spread of the Brazilian accessibility law are important issues to be dealt with to boost a stronger accessibility awareness among people involved in Web development.

Revealing the whiteboard to blind students: An inclusive approach to provide mediation in synchronous e-learning activities

Promoting the inclusion of students with disabilities in e-learning systems has brought many challenges for researchers and educators. The use of synchronous communication tools such as interactive whiteboards has been regarded as an obstacle for inclusive education. In this paper, we present the proposal of an inclusive approach to provide blind students with the possibility to participate in live learning sessions with whiteboard software. The approach is based on the provision of accessible textual descriptions by a live mediator. With the accessible descriptions, students are able to navigate through the elements and explore the content of the class using screen readers. The method used for this study consisted of the implementation of a software prototype within a virtual learning environment and a case study with the participation of a blind student in a live distance class. The results from the case study have shown that this approach can be very effective, and may be a starting point to provide blind students with resources they had previously been deprived from. The proof of concept implemented has shown that many further possibilities may be explored to enhance the interaction of blind users with educational content in whiteboards, and further pedagogical approaches can be investigated from this proposal.

From specification to experimentation: a software component search engine architecture

This paper presents a software component search engine, from the early specification and design steps to two experiments performed to evaluate its performance. After the experience gained from the use of this first version, several improvements were introduced. The current version of the engine combines text mining and facet-based search. The experiments indicated, so far, that using these two techniques together is better than using them separately. From the experience obtained in these experiments and in industrial tests, we point out possible improvements and future research directions, which are presented and discussed at the end of the paper.

An approach based on metrics for monitoring web accessibility in Brazilian municipalities web sites

Monitoring and measuring the accessibility of government Web sites is an important challenge for regulators and policy makers. Moreover, over the next few years, e-government (e-gov) services are expected to expand and it is necessary to ensure access for everyone. In this paper, we present a metric based approach for evaluating municipalities Web pages using automatic accessibility evaluation tools. The sampling of the pages was done by the tool E-GOVMeter, and the accessibility evaluation and generation of the metrics was done by means of an adaptation of the tool Hera. The results show that much work should be done to improve the accessibility of Brazilian municipalities Web sites. Although it has limitations, the use of automatically generated accessibility metrics is a powerful tool for helping measuring and monitoring the accessibility of e-gov Web sites.

Using screen readers to reinforce web accessibility education

This paper discusses an approach for Web accessibility education tacking advantage of short introductory courses. In this approach, screen readers were used toallimmerse students in the problems experienced by blind users while using the Web. Experimental results from an evaluation exercise carried out by students showedallthat the use ofallscreen readers was helpful to better understand and to reinforce the concepts of Web accessibility.