Abstract
BackgroundThe lack of availability of disability data has been identified as a major challenge hindering continuous disability equity monitoring. It is important to develop a platform that enables searching for disability data to expose systemic discrimination and social exclusion, which increase vulnerability to inequitable social conditions.ObjectiveOur project aims to create an accessible and multilingual pilot disability website that structures and integrates data about people with disabilities and provides data for national and international disability advocacy communities. The platform will be endowed with a document upload function with hybrid (automated and manual) paragraph tagging, while the querying function will involve an intelligent natural language search in the supported languages.MethodsWe have designed and implemented a virtual community platform using Wikibase, Semantic Web, machine learning, and web programming tools to enable disability communities to upload and search for disability documents. The platform data model is based on an ontology we have designed following the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The virtual community facilitates the uploading and sharing of validated information, and supports disability rights advocacy by enabling dissemination of knowledge.ResultsUsing health informatics and artificial intelligence techniques (namely Semantic Web, machine learning, and natural language processing techniques), we were able to develop a pilot virtual community that supports disability rights advocacy by facilitating uploading, sharing, and accessing disability data. The system consists of a website on top of a Wikibase (a Semantic Web–based datastore). The virtual community accepts 4 types of users: information producers, information consumers, validators, and administrators. The virtual community enables the uploading of documents, semiautomatic tagging of their paragraphs with meaningful keywords, and validation of the process before uploading the data to the disability Wikibase. Once uploaded, public users (information consumers) can perform a semantic search using an intelligent and multilingual search engine (QAnswer). Further enhancements of the platform are planned.ConclusionsThe platform ontology is flexible and can accommodate advocacy reports and disability policy and legislation from specific jurisdictions, which can be accessed in relation to the CRPD articles. The platform ontology can be expanded to fit international contexts. The virtual community supports information upload and search. Semiautomatic tagging and intelligent multilingual semantic search using natural language are enabled using artificial intelligence techniques, namely Semantic Web, machine learning, and natural language processing.
Highlights
Human rights monitoring for people with disabilities is a pressing issue in Canada and France, as well as internationally
The virtual community enables the uploading of documents, semiautomatic tagging of their paragraphs with meaningful keywords, and validation of the process before uploading the data to the disability Wikibase
The platform ontology is flexible and can accommodate advocacy reports and disability policy and legislation from specific jurisdictions, which can be accessed in relation to the CRPD articles
Summary
Human rights monitoring for people with disabilities is a pressing issue in Canada and France, as well as internationally. Data and information about human rights policy and legal precedents, lived experiences, and media portrayals of people with disabilities are scarce This limited data and information hinders the capacity for knowledge mobilization among researchers, nongovernmental organizations, and advocacy groups in their efforts to monitor the implementation and realization of human rights for people with disabilities. A few sources provide access to some disability data (eg, the Disability Data Advocacy Working Group [1], Disability Data Portal [2], and Disability Rights Promotion International [DRPI] [3]) These databases have limited data while the need for such data is overwhelming. It is important to develop a platform that enables searching for disability data to expose systemic discrimination and social exclusion, which increase vulnerability to inequitable social conditions
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