EASIER System. Evaluating a Spanish Lexical Simplification Proposal with People with Cognitive Impairments

Abstract

Cognitive impairments in text reading and understanding not only affect individuals with intellectual disabilities but also deaf and deaf-blind ones, the illiterate, and immigrants whose native language is different, among others. Technology to support accessibility to texts is required to help people to understand information. This article addresses an evaluation of the EASIER tool conducted with intellectual disabilities and older people for the identification of complex and unusual words in Spanish texts and proposes them simpler synonyms for the complex word detected. Fifty participants were recruited in collaboration with an organization that works with people with intellectual disabilities. The participants were divided into two groups: Group 1 represented 25 older people, and Group 2 represented 25 people with intellectual disabilities. The evaluation showed that, for complex word identification, the selected texts were more complex in content for people with intellectual disabilities than for older people, which consequently suggests that the proposal had a greater benefit for the intellectually disabled group. Related to the proposal of substitutes for complex words, there is a high number of substitutions accepted in participants with a high school level of education for Group 1 and primary level of education for Group 2. Additional multivariate analysis shows that the system is adequate for people of advanced age.