Article published in:
Recent Advances in Automatic Readability Assessment and Text Simplification
Edited by Thomas François and Delphine Bernhard
[ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 165:2] 2014
► pp. 299–323

Making numerical information more accessible

The implementation of a Numerical Expression Simplification System for Spanish

| Universidad Complutense de Madrid
| Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Are rounded numbers easier to understand than exact numbers? Information in newspapers often takes the form of numerical expressions which pose comprehension problems for many people, including people with disabilities, low literacy levels or lack of access to advanced technology. The purpose of this paper is to motivate and describe a rule-based lexical component that simplifies numerical expressions in Spanish texts. We propose a simplification approach that makes news articles more accessible to readers with specials needs by rewriting difficult numerical expressions in a simpler way. We carried out a study that identifies powerful simplification strategies to simplify numerical information in a text by analysing a parallel corpus of original texts and their manual simplifications. The study is complemented with an analysis of simplifications obtained in response to a questionnaire where subjects were asked to produce simplifications of numerical expressions in context. Finally, we implemented and evaluated a simplification system that mimics the simplification strategies that were found to be effective.
Keywords: Simplification Strategies, Text Accessibility, Simplification Corpus, Numerical Expressions
Published online: 23 January 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.165.2.07bau
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