Participation in the Intelligibility Testing of Easy-to-Read Texts: Development of an Interface for People with Learning Difficulties.

Standard language texts pose significant challenges for some people because they do not understand the content due to the linguistic complexity. Transforming them into a simplified linguistic form can reduce these communicative hurdles. Easy-to-read texts enable people with learning disabilities to receive texts independently and thus form an important basis for equal participation in social life. In order to ensure a high level of comprehensibility of easy-to-read texts, simplifications are made not only to the language but also to the content. During manual translation, the simplifications made are checked by target group readers. In the case of (semi-)automated intelligibility checking, the check by target group readers is omitted. This paper focuses on the integration of the target audience of easy-to-read texts into the text review process. A web-based interface adapted to the reception needs is created and a rating system is integrated, through which people with learning disabilities can independently give feedback on the text comprehensibility. The interface will be evaluated in the form of a user study with brain-injured people. The results obtained indicate that both the web-based interface and the rating system are suitable for actively involving target group readers in the text review sub-process. The results of the study form the basis for the development of a system that takes into account the real text comprehension of the target group readers in addition to linguistic features when annotating texts in plain language.